


Treading Carefully

by Land_Under_Wave



Series: Treading Carefully [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All the main characters are 9 or 10, Anxiety, Friendship, Mild Angst, Post-Canon, Sort of an AU, accidental magic, but also not really, mention of depressive episodes/thoughts, pretty much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:16:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23041189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Land_Under_Wave/pseuds/Land_Under_Wave
Summary: I am writing this for a friend of mine who wanted a fic about what would happen if wizards had to go to muggle school before they went to Hogwarts.Linnea Burnett is a young witch living in England. Driven out of her previous muggle school after being bullied for her magical wizarding background, she is finally ready to go back to school, determined to keep out of trouble. But when she starts to make friends with a magic-obsessed muggle boy, can she overcome her fear of rejection to be honest about who she is, or will she be treading carefully for the rest of her life?
Series: Treading Carefully [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655881
Kudos: 3





	1. Kevin

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so please be kind! Constructive criticism is always welcome. I've had to play a little fast and loose with canon (but y'know, death of the author and all that. I've also invented some new magical creatures and potions, and generally am not that good at writing characters who already exist, so my apologies if anything Luna, Rolf, Hermione and Professor McGonagall do seems out of character.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Linnea Burnett was afraid. This was not an unusual occurrence; she was afraid of everything. She was afraid of the dark, of hospitals, of dementers (but then, wasn’t everyone afraid of dementers?). She was terrified of being a squib, and was frightened of having flying lessons. Most of all, she was terrified of muggles. And today she was more afraid than she had ever been. Today she was starting a new school, in a new town. A school full of muggles. The last one had been a disaster, and only a very persuasive visit from the Minister for Magic herself had been able to coax her to return to public schooling, instead of being homeschooled, like she had wanted. Wizards and muggles had been attending school together for nearly seven years, and while there had been widespread hostility and fear towards wizard pupils from their muggle teachers and classmates, never had it gone so badly wrong as it had with Linnea. She had been subjected to a two year campaign of misery and cruelty, resulting in her being left in St Mungo’s for nearly a month having the majority of her bones regrown after some of her muggle classmates had got hold of a local pensioner’s wand and wreaked havoc with it. And now she was going into year five, at a new school, and even the terror of having no bones could not compete with the terror that it might happen again. 

“Lin, you nearly ready?” her mother called up the stairs, jolting her out of her reminiscences.

“Coming, Mum!” she yelled back. There was a note of hysteria in her voice. Lin turned briefly to her mirror, double checking that her new uniform was perfect, and ran down the stairs. Her parents beamed up at her as she hurtled towards them. They were so proud of her going back to school that they had even agreed to let her have an owl when she went to Hogwarts, which before they had refused on account of the mess. She wondered if they would still be proud of her when they found out what she was planning to do in order to survive her remaining two years at muggle school. 

“Come on then, Muppet,” her father beamed at her, using a new nickname that he seemed to think was cute. Her parents took the whole muggle integration thing very seriously, and in addition to introducing potion-making classes to the local village hall, they had become quite passionate about a muggle invention called television. Lin didn’t really understand it, or all the measures that had to be taken for muggle electrical technology to work around magic. The Muppets was a new discovery of her father’s, and he had decided that ‘Muppet’ was the perfect nickname for her. She was too nervous to bat him off as she usually did, and he scooped her up into a bear hug before allowing her to jump into the car, in which her mother was now waiting. He waved them off as they left, still beaming. The car was another muggle invention that Lin was still not quite sure about. She thought that broomsticks, apparition, portkeys and the floo network seemed a much safer way to travel, but for this, her first day, she had insisted on being dropped off at school in the car. It was part of the plan. Most wizards didn’t bother with cars, simply showing up at school by Portkey, but Lin wasn’t going to tell anyone that she was a witch. That was her big secret, the thing that was going to make her parents so ashamed of her – she was going to pretend that she was not a witch. Muggle schools were not allowed to ask parents applying for a place for their children whether or not they were wizards; the Minister for Magic, and the muggle Prime Minister had decided that this would open the door for discrimination. The decision to tell her schoolmates that she was a witch rested entirely on the pupil. And this pupil’s decision was that no one was ever going to know she was a witch.

The first morning was reasonably uneventful, as first mornings went. The ‘come up and tell us about yourself, Lin’ section of the day was mundane; she wasn’t talking about magic, so she wouldn’t have to field questions about which Hogwarts house she wanted to be in, or what her favourite spell was, or if she had had any ‘magical accidents’ – the muggle name for the small manifestations of magic that wizard children often experienced when they were young. Muggles were very frightened of magical accidents. So her brief speech was quick - her name was Lin, she was nearly 10, she had a pet rat and her favourite colour was yellow. This was because she wanted to be sorted into Hufflepuff when she started Hogwarts, but they didn’t need to know that. She stayed fairly quiet for the rest of the day, not raising her hand in numeracy class, even though she knew most of the answers, and was just starting to relax when a slightly sticky finger tapped the back of her hand when she was sitting down to eat her lunch. 

“Is thomeone thitting here?” The voice had a slight lisp, and belonged to a thin, pale boy with watery blue eyes and fluffy black hair who was hovering hopefully behind the chair next to her.

“Um” said Lin; no one apart from the teacher had really spoken to her all day. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted this sticky-fingered boy sitting next to her anyway. The boy gave her a pitying look and repeated his question slowly, with a slightly raised voice:

“Is. Thomeone. Thitting. Here?”

“I’m not deaf!” the retort came out more harshly than expected.

“Oh, thorry”

“You just surprised me,” Lin continued more gently. “Wasn’t really sure what I was going to say. No one is sitting there, you can if you want.” The boy looked surprised, hesitated for a minute and then seemed to decide that she meant it, slipping quickly into the chair. He started to shovel what smelled like tuna sandwiches out of a plastic box into his mouth. Lin suddenly felt nervous. This was the moment, she knew, when she should probably ask him his name, start a conversation. The last two years of muggle school were going to be lonely with no one to talk to. On the other hand, friends were dangerous. Friends wanted to come over after school. Friends asked questions about the broomsticks in the cupboard. Friends turned on you and accidentally removed all your bones as punishment for being a witch. No, better to let him finish shovelling his sandwiches and leave her alone.

It wasn’t to be. When the sandwiches were done, a grubby hand delved into a red backpack and produced another plastic box, this one containing two large slices of chocolate cake. And then another one with sticks of carrot in it. And then another one with boiled eggs in it. Lin’s palms started to sweat. How long could she sit next to this boy, in a lunch hall where everyone was talking to the people they were sat next to, without starting a conversation? At least he wasn’t trying to talk to her. She was just considering going to finish her lunch in the girls’ toilets when the lisping voice piped up again.

“You’re new.” It wasn’t a question. Lin wasn’t really sure what to say so she just said,

“Yeah.” She had hoped that this would deter further conversation, but the boy wasn’t put off.

“I’m Kevin. I have a pet dog. My favourite colour ith altho yellow. Like Hufflepuff”

“You’re a wizard?!” Lin had meant to ignore him but she couldn’t ignore that! The boy called Kevin gave a long-suffering sigh.

“No. I wish I wath though. I want to go to Hogwartth! I hope that I’m thecretly adopted and my real parentth were actually wizardth.” Lin didn’t really know what to say to this. This seemed a very personal thing to tell someone that he had only been speaking to for about two minutes, and Lin wasn’t about to tell him that she was a witch just because he had told her that he wanted to go to Hogwarts! Liking wizards in theory didn’t mean he liked them in practice! Part of her was disappointed. Another wizard pupil would have made making friends much easier and much less dangerous. She didn’t realise that she hadn’t responded to the outburst until Kevin said,

“You don’t talk much, do you? My mum sayth I talk too much but I think talking ith great! Do you like dogth? You have a pet rat but dogth are way better than ratthh!” Lin made to reply but Kevin was off again.  
“I had to go to the dentitht thith morning, thatth why I have thith lithp” That explained why he looked familiar; he had left shortly after her ‘tell us about yourself Lin’ thing. 

“I like dogs,” Lin said slowly. “And why do you want to be a wizard?” She thought this was a harmless question to start with. It wasn’t.

“Because withardth are cool. They have wandth and potionth and they can fly and do that thing were they thpin around and magically turn up thomewhere elthe. And they get to go to Hogwartth.”

“What’s so great about Hogwarts?” As if she didn’t know!

“You can go and live there. In Thcotland or wherever and you don’t have to thtay with your parentth exthept in the thummer. You don’t even have to write to them or email them or anything.” The Ministry of Magic had been working for a number of years on some kind of spell that would allow muggle technology to work in magical environments. This was mainly for the benefit of muggle-born students and students who had muggle friends; they tended not to get on very well with owls. Besides, Minister of Magic Hermione Granger thought the wizarding world was backward to refuse to use muggle technology simply because it was muggle technology. Kevin looked embarrassed, as though he hadn’t meant to say anything about his home life to a complete stranger. Lin was stunned. She had grown up in a happy home and couldn’t imagine not wanting to see or stay in touch with her parents. And what a thing to tell someone you had only just met! She wasn’t sure what to say, so she patted Kevin awkwardly on the shoulder. She noticed, uncomfortably, that his eyes were full of tears and she started to panic. What were you supposed to do with people who were crying? She was thankfully spared embarrassment because Kevin quickly wiped his eyes and changed the subject. 

The rest of the lunch break was spent discussing the safe subjects of literacy, numeracy and the Lord of the Rings. Or at least, Kevin chattered about these things and Lin nodded and said ‘uh huh’ in all the right places. When the bell went for lessons to start again, all traces of unhappiness were gone from Kevin’s face. He got up quickly and muttered 

“thankth for letting me thit nextht to you” at the speed of light and hurried away. Lin blinked after him. She’d never met anyone who was so much like a human hurricane. As she slowly got up to return to the year five classroom, she thought about Kevin. She thought about his sadness and his pain and his surprise that anyone would want to sit next to him at lunch time. She thought about how unhappy she had been last time she was at school, and how much she had wanted someone to be kind to her. She thought about having a friend who didn’t know she was a wizard. She thought about asking Kevin to sit with her at lunch again tomorrow. And when she went back into the classroom, she smiled at Kevin from across the room, and Kevin smiled back.


	2. Friends give you feelings, and feelings cause accidents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lin and Kevin get closer, and also have a bit of a misunderstanding. A fairly minor misunderstanding, because they are 9. But a misunderstanding nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello - so yes, I know I just posted chapter 1 today and no one has read it yet but I have 5 chapters of this thing already written and I didn't think there was any point waiting to put the others up

By the second week of term, sitting next to Kevin at lunch time had become a habit. For the first several days, he had consistently asked permission to sit down before doing so, but by the fifth day he simply plonked down into the chair and began either shovelling food into his mouth or chattering a mile a minute. Or both. Usually both. The first time he did this, Lin felt a small prick of accomplished pride somewhere inside her. Clearly, she didn’t exude weirdness, or at least not non-muggle weirdness. She was passing as normal, and it was less difficult than she had expected. She was also doing well at muggle school. She liked to read, and she was hungry for knowledge, especially anything about history, so she was popular with her teacher, Mrs Taylor, who had a degree in history. 

On the 15th of September, Mrs Taylor announced that the autumn term project was going to be on Ancient Egypt. An excited buzz went around the classroom. Ancient Egypt was exciting! Lin’s heart sank. Why did she have to pick Ancient Egypt? They could have done the Tudors or the Stone Age or literally anything else. Something less obviously magical. Something safe! Since the muggles had learned that wizards lived among them, the link between magic – real magic - and Egypt had also become more widely known. She would need to be careful. Part of her, though, was excited. She knew a reasonable amount about Ancient Egypt, but only from a magical perspective; quite a lot of spells, like an early form of Reparo, had been invented by Ancient Egyptian wizards. This would be a chance to find out about Ancient Egyptian muggles!

“You will work in groups of three. I am going to choose the groups for this project,” Mrs Taylor told the disappointed class, “but I would like you all to write the name of two people you would like to be partnered with. You will all get to be in a group with at least one friend.” Lin looked around blankly. Apart from Kevin, she didn’t have any friends. Kevin was also disappointed; he had hoped that he wouldn’t have to share Lin with anyone. Lin’s eyes fell on Isobel Rieker, who sat on her table, opposite her. They hadn’t really spoken very much, but she seemed nice, and she was also good at using computers. Lin didn’t really understand computers, so it would be good to have her in the group. She wrote Isobel’s name under Kevin’s on a slip of paper and handed it in to Mrs Taylor. When the bell went for lunch, Year 5 emerged from their classroom with eyes aglow; Ancient Egypt was full of exciting things: mummies, gold, jewels – and magic. 

Kevin was especially excited about the magic. In their almost two weeks of friendship, Lin had discovered that Kevin was not only fascinated by magic, but also knew a lot about it. Or at least he thought he did. Trust her to find the only person who was obsessed with magic in a school which, as far as she could tell, contained no wizards apart from herself! His mind absorbed facts about hazel wands and 15th Century alchemists and turning base metal into gold and ley lines like a sponge. Kevin was also interested in Ancient Egyptian magic. He spent lunchtime telling Lin all about it, the gods and goddesses of cats and childbirth and knowledge and water. Ra, the god of the sun, who the Egyptians believed sailed across the sky every morning and died every evening. Of course, what he didn’t know, and what Lin decided it was better not to tell him, was that Ra really did sail across the sky in a boat. He had a philosopher’s stone waiting under the horizon for him, so that he could revive himself to repeat the journey again the next day. She figured that if he discovered this, he might actually explode with joy. And aside from this being very messy, it would also probably alert him that she was a witch. Now Kevin was talking about Anubis, the God of the Dead:

“He weighs people’s hearts after they die. He has this, like, big scale thing, and he takes your heart out and puts it on the scale to see if you were a good person or a bad person. Also he has a head like a jackal.” Lin nodded and smiled again. She wasn’t going to tell him that the god of the dead had noticed all the jackals hanging around Egyptian graveyards and thought it would be cool to be able to turn himself into one sometimes, either. Or that he was a famously terrible Animagus who got stuck halfway and ended up half jackal and half human. He didn’t need to know. She decided it would be safer to change the subject slightly.

“I wonder when Mrs Taylor will tell us which groups are going to be in?” she wondered aloud. 

“Probably soon,” Kevin replied bluntly before continuing with a lecture on Shabtis, small figures that were placed in sarcophagi with mummies.  
“They’re supposed to be servants when you get to the afterlife. Some people saw them moving around, though, like just walking, in the real world,” this sounded to Lin like careless wizards, so she steered the conversation away again.

“Maybe they drank too much wine or something. Little clay doll things can’t walk. Who did you put on your piece of paper to be in a group with?” Kevin gave her a deer-in-headlights kind of look, turned his attention to his sandwiches (marmite ones today), and began his usually shovelling. Lin’s mind raced. Had he not put her name down on his piece of paper? Was he panicking because he was embarrassed and didn’t want to tell her? Had she completely misread the situation and actually she was really weird, but he didn’t know how to get rid of her, so he just sat next to her at lunchtime because he didn’t want to be rude? Did he know she was a witch but didn’t know how to talk to her about it? She wasn’t sure what to do next, so she didn’t say anything. Kevin didn’t either. When the bell went, they returned to the year five classroom in silence, not knowing what to say to one another. 

Kevin didn’t tell her that he had put her name down twice because he didn’t have any other friends and wanted to make sure he got put in a group with her. He didn’t tell her that he regretted it now because, if she had to ask who he wanted to be in a group with, maybe they weren’t as good friends as he had thought. He didn’t want to see the pitying look on her face when she told him that she wanted to be in a group with other people. He didn’t want to think about the cold shame of having to be shoe-horned into a group with other people because no one wanted to go with him. So he didn’t say anything and avoided looking at Lin for the rest of the day. He went home without saying goodbye.  
Lin took her time getting her coat and rucksack from her peg at the end of the day. She felt dazed, like she had just woken up from a long nap. She had waited for Kevin after Mrs Taylor had let them go home, and he had pushed past her without saying anything, and almost sprinted for the door. How could she have got it so wrong? How had she let herself get into this situation again? Friends were dangerous, she knew that. Even when they didn’t know you were a witch – having thought about it all the way through Art, she had concluded that this was probably the case – they gave you feelings. Feelings of being lost and lonely and afraid. Feelings that led to accidents. Accidents like the windows rattling in the classroom all afternoon. They hadn’t quite shattered, but the more she thought about Kevin and how lonely she was, the worse the rattling became. Mrs Taylor had to call the caretaker to come and try to work out what was happening. She had prodded at the window seals and the latches and concluded that she didn’t know what was happening, but that Mrs Taylor should probably think about teaching somewhere else until it subsided, just in case.

“You can’t be too careful with glass, Mrs T., she said wisely. Mrs Taylor nodded slowly.

“I just don’t understand why they’re rattling so much; it’s not even windy outside!” she said shakily. She moved the class outside, telling year five to collect autumn leaves to make a collage with. This had proved difficult, as the unearthly wind that Lin was generating, but not controlling, blew all the leaves around the school field in a whirlpool of fiery colour. A very confused Mrs Taylor had given up and decided to run a P.E lesson instead.   
Now she was walking home, by herself, and unsure of what to do. She couldn’t tell her parents, because this would involve lying about telling her schoolmates she was a witch. She was already lying to everyone else in her life, she wasn’t sure she could face lying to them too. But not telling them would mean she would need to be smiley and bubbly and interesting all evening, and just thinking about doing that made her feel very tired. The only solution, she decided, was to have a stomach bug. She was feeling sick anyway, and stomach bugs did not lead to uncomfortable questions she didn’t want to answer. Yes, she thought, as she felt under the doormat for the spare key. She would have a stomach bug. 

“Hello?” she called into the house, “Mum? Dad? I’m home!” To Lin’s immense relief, there was no answer. No awkward questions about why she hadn’t gone to the park with Kevin, then. She went wearily up the stairs and collapsed on her bed. It had been the longest of days.

Kevin, meanwhile, was sitting on a swing. It was the first time since he had met Lin that they had not gone to the park together after school, and he missed her. But what if she didn’t miss him? What if she was relieved that she didn’t have to talk to him? The thought gave him an uncomfortable burning feeling in his tummy, so he tried not to think it. He swung slowly backwards and forwards, staring blankly at the other end of the park, putting off going home. They would probably be fighting again, parents. Even though his dad didn’t live with them anymore, he was always on the phone or in the kitchen, shouting at mum about when he got to see him son. And mum was usually shouting right back, about how he was a terrible husband and a terrible father and if she had it her way he would never see Kevin. No one asked him what he thought. He wasn’t even important to his own parents, and now it seemed he wasn’t important to Lin either. He wasn’t important to anyone. 

Though they didn’t know it, both were having the same sad half-dreams, as they lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. They were both thinking that the rest of the term seemed very long, now that they would be alone.


	3. Wind and Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok, buckle up friends. It’s a long one. I actually had time to sit down and write properly for once, so I had a lot to say! This chapter is full of childish angst, woke teachers and I even invented a magical creature and potion (look at me being all creative and making stuff up!)
> 
> (see notes at the bottom for information on magical creatures/spells/potions)
> 
> In this chapter, we just have to remember the usually fickle and speedy nature of friendship in primary school – you know that thing where if you had been talking to someone a lot that day you would take them over to your mum in the playground at the end of the day to ask if maybe they could come over to play tomorrow if their mum said it was ok? I don’t know how well that came across but that’s what I was going for.

For Lin, the remainder of the week passed in a dizzy haze of misery. The day after the incident with the windows, Lin woke up to find that all of her school uniform had grown big enough to fit a giant and had turned an alarming shade of orange. When her mother came in to make sure she was ready, she found her daughter sobbing into a pile of fluorescent fabric and went to sit down beside her on the bed.

“Why has this happened?! Why today? Why ever? Why can’t I just be normal or make nice things happen like Lily Potter who just makes friends with cats?” Linnea cried, trying to tear her newly-enormous school skirt. Her mother took her hands gently and lifted Lin’s face so she was looking at her.

“Do you remember when we talked about this, my love? How the magic matches the feelings you are having? If you are feeling sad or frightened or….or lonely, say, then the baby-magic will look very different to if you are feeling happy and loved and safe” she looked quizzically at her daughter. “Are you feeling sad or frightened or lonely? You were very quiet yesterday evening. Are you finding school difficult? Is anyone being unkind to you about being a witch?” The ugly knot in Lin’s stomach tightened painfully. She wanted to tell her mother then, that she had not told anyone at school that she was a witch, but she couldn’t do it.

“No, Mum,” she sniffled, “no one is being mean to me. It’s just very lonely being the only witch.” That was all she could safely say. She couldn’t tell Mum that it was lonely because she had to lie to everyone. She couldn’t tell Mum that Kevin had stopped talking to her because he didn’t want to be friends with a weirdo, and that things would be even worse if he found out she was a witch. So she just cried and cried and cried, and Mum held her very tight and told her that everything was going to be alright, but that maybe she should stay off school today while her school uniform went back to normal.

“I have some of Mrs Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover somewhere, let’s see if putting some of that in the washing machine helps. And while it’s washing, maybe you can help your Dad get rid of the Kelplings that have got into the pond – they’re starting to pupate, and I think it might alarm the neighbours if they start seeing tiny horses running around everywhere!” Mrs. Burnett got to her feet, pulling Lin up beside her and kissing the top of her head.

“I’ll go and phone the school now and tell them there’s been an accident, shall I?” Lin gave a start of horror

“NO!” she blurted. Her mother looked startled. “I mean…they’ll want to know what sort of accident it was, and it’s so embarrassing. You know, turning your school uniform orange and huge just because you were feeling a bit sad, they wouldn’t understand. Just say I have a tummy bug.” Her mother gave her a long, appraising look, the sort of look that only a mother can give when she knows she is being lied to. Lin held her breath, but Mum only nodded and said ‘alright’ in a strange sort of voice and went downstairs with the massive orange school uniform. Lin sat back down on her bed feeling even worse than before. She would need to be extra good today, so Mum didn’t pry any further. Lin didn’t like lying to her parents. She started to pull on some of her old clothes to help Dad with the Kelplings. Hopefully, pulling small, horse-shaped pupas out of the pond in the back garden would help take her mind off how sad she was. She didn’t want to have any more accidents today.

The following day was not a great deal better. Though her school uniform remained the correct shape and size, her morning literacy lesson was interrupted by an invasion of bees, which zoomed through the classroom causing havoc for about twenty minutes before finally dispersing. Mrs Taylor looked on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but Lin still caught her looking at her with a strange intensity that made her feel very frightened. Kevin still wasn’t talking to her; he had ignored her completely when she got to school that morning and he did not sit with her at lunchtime either. She had seen him come into the hall, clock where she was sitting and then deliberately turn his back on her and sit on the other side of the room. Loneliness sat in the pit of her stomach like a stone and she had to swallow her sandwich around a massive lump in her throat. She remembered the physical thing that loneliness could become, from before, and she hunched her shoulders against the growing realisation that maybe things wouldn’t be different this time. She was so wrapped up in her own misery that she didn’t notice the rest of the people in hall suddenly complaining that all of their food had started to taste like salt water.

In Wednesday’s science lesson, Mrs Taylor wanted them to work in pairs to collect some leaves from the school field, draw them and then label the different parts of the leaf on their drawing. Lin’s stomach stone got bigger. She didn’t really know anyone else apart from Kevin, who had swiftly attached himself to Jack Taylor, who sat on his table. Then she remembered Isobel, who she had put down to be in a group with for the Egypt project. Suddenly feeling very shy, she turned to the dark-haired girl next to her and said quietly 

“Can I go with you?”. Isobel’s coffee-coloured skin became tinged with pink, and she beamed at Lin, nodding. They made their way onto the field with the rest of the class, and began to talk about mundane things like siblings (Isobel, who preferred to be called Izza, had four) and their favourite books (They both liked the Alex Rider series). Lin’s stomach stone shrank slightly. They went to sit under a tree at the other end of the field to everyone else and sat in companionable silence for ten minutes, busily collecting various shaped leaves and sitting down to draw them. Lin almost didn’t notice Kevin and Jack walking towards their end of the field. She started to feel very uncomfortable and the stony knot in her belly tightened painfully again. An unearthly wind started to ruffle the leaves of the tree and Lin tried to concentrate more on her leaves. Kevin and Jack sat down under the next tree and Lin could just make out their conversation:

“I bet my mum would let you come to my house for tea tonight if I asked. We could play Pokemon.” This appeared to be a continuation of an earlier conversation. “You could ask your mum after school today.” Kevin nodded uncomfortably, said “yeah, ok” and then didn’t say anything else. Lin’s stomach knot tightened up even more; it felt like someone was wringing her out from the inside. Kevin had a new friend now. The wind got stronger, and twigs and leaves began raining down from the tree above them. Izza looked up, confused. None of the other trees in the field seemed to be affected. 

“Maybe there is a small wizard nearby having a tantrum,” she said nervously, looking at the houses that surrounded the field. Lin said nothing, rooted to the spot with misery. Maybe the magic would make her turn into a tree. Maybe it would be good to be a tree. Trees didn’t have to worry about being lonely; they were too busy being trees and growing leaves and twigs and holding up bird nests and things. The wind became so strong that the tree began to groan and crack, and Izza shot up from the ground and went to stand ten metres away from the flailing branches. Lin still didn’t move. Even Jack, sitting under the next tree over, began to look alarmed, although Kevin still seemed to purposely not be looking at her.

“Lin!!” Isobel shrieked, grabbing her painfully by the wrist and dragging her away from the tree, “what’s the matter with you, why won’t you move?!”. Isobel’s voice seemed to be coming from a very long way away, as did Mrs Taylor’s when she finally came running over from the other end of the field. 

“Linnea? Linnea, dear, are you alright? You are very pale. Linnea?” Lin looked up slowly.

“Mmm,” she murmured vaguely, a blank look on her face. Mrs Taylor gave her another odd knowing look, which no one noticed, and helped Lin to her feet.

“Can you walk, dear?” she asked gently, kneeling beside her. Lin nodded.

“I’m ok, I just need some water. I always freeze when I am afraid,” she added, by way of explanation. Mrs Taylor nodded, looking very much as though she didn’t believe her, but didn’t say anything. Lin knew she needed to be more careful to keep her feelings in check, if she didn’t feel anything then she couldn’t hurt people. She looked around for Kevin but couldn’t see him.  
He was standing at the back of the crowd of people that had gathered around her, more worried than he was letting on. He was worried about Lin and wanted to help her and ask her if she was alright but thought she maybe wouldn’t want him to do that. And he was worried about going to Jack’s house. Because going to Jack’s house would probably lead to questions about his mum and dad, and then he would have to lie. He couldn’t tell them about mum and dad fighting all the time.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, which Lin was grateful for. She had refused to be sent to see the school nurse, insisting that apart from feeling a bit shaky and having a headache, she wasn’t injured, and just needed a drink and a rest. Mrs Taylor had her arranging the paints under the sink at the back of the class while the rest of the class started drawing and labelling the leaves they had collected. Thankfully, Mrs Taylor also didn’t go out to the playground after school to talk to Mum about what had happened, and if Mum noticed that she was paler and quieter than usual, she didn’t say anything about it. Lin went to bed early that night and lay awake for hours thinking. She needed to keep control of herself. Isobel could have been hurt today. She hadn’t been, Lin had checked, and Izza had given her a big hug, which was nice, and an assurance that the young witch or wizard nearby whose magic had got out of control would probably be very tired now and nothing more would happen today, which wasn’t. If she wasn’t more careful with her magic, she was going to hurt someone, really hurt them, or someone was going to find out about her being a witch, and then she was the one that was going to get hurt. What if a branch had fallen on Isobel or Jack or Kevin? What if next time it was worse than a tree in a magical wind, or bees. What if it was knives or Cornish Pixies or making boils grow on people or making people explode? She wanted to talk to Mum and Dad about it. She wanted Kevin to be talking to her again. She wanted to never go to school again. She wanted to be a muggle; she wanted it so badly that it hurt. The tears came then, and Lin turned onto her front and sobbed into her pillow, praying for all the magic that was inside her to come out of her in her tears. She didn’t want it anymore, or at least not yet. Not until she was at Hogwarts and she could tell people about it. She didn’t want it she didn’t want it she didn’t want it. She slammed her fist down on the bed next to her and the mirror on the wall by the door shattered. She screamed in frustration and the shards of glass flew at the wall above the bed and stuck there, quivering ominously. She buried her face in her pillow again, trying to quiet herself. She would have to clean up the glass tomorrow. She hoped her parents hadn’t heard the noise she was making; they had been out in the garden collecting fireflies for the Illuminum potion Dad was making. She lay very still for half an hour, jumping at every noise, before finally falling into an uneasy sleep. 

The following day was Thursday; tomorrow was going to be a Teacher Training Day, so they would work on their projects this afternoon instead. They would get into their groups and make a poster of their different ideas about the Ancient Egyptians, that they could do research about in the library for their projects. As always, putting people into groups had not been easy. Mrs Taylor always wanted to keep friendship groups together if she could, but she didn’t want the children who didn’t have many friends to be left out. She had planned to put Kevin in a group with Linnea Burnett, but then this week they seemed not to have spoken a word to each other. She wondered what could have happened between them to cause this sudden and extreme rift, when they had been as thick as thieves the previous fortnight. She suspected a case of self-sabotage, but she would need to talk to them to be sure. Kevin had even gone home with Jack and his mother the previous evening, for a ‘playdate’, and Mrs Taylor had marvelled again at the fickleness of children’s friendships. She had been warned by Mr Jones that the two had been at each other’s throats all of last year. She decided to tackle Kevin first, keeping him in for the first ten minutes of breaktime on the pretext of ‘helping her put away the paints’ after their art lesson. She sat him down at one of the tables by the sink while they washed out the palettes and asked casually if everything was alright. He gave her a look.

“Fine. Why? Did Jack say something? I hate Jack.” Mrs Taylor bit back her amusement.

“Hate is a very strong word,” she told him gently. “It isn’t nice to say you hate someone, and I’m sure you don’t really hate him. Jack didn’t say anything to me. But I did notice that you and Linnea have not been speaking to each other this week. I wondered if you had a fight?” she prompted. He gave her a sullen look and scrubbed more aggressively at the palette he was cleaning. Mrs Taylor knew enough about children to take this as an affirmative. Her theory started to look even more likely.   
“What were you fighting about, Kevin? Linnea seems like a very nice girl, I’m sure if you tell her she has upset you she would be very sorry.” Kevin’s shoulders tensed and she knew she was almost there. “And it isn’t nice to ignore people. Remember when we had the assembly last year about using your words? Have you told her about how you feel?” Kevin’s shoulders relaxed and she felt a surge of victory.  
“She doesn’t like me anymore!” he wailed, still scrubbing the palette ferociously. She took them gently out of his hands; the school’s art budget was limited as it was and she didn’t want him breaking the brittle plastic.  
“And why do you think that?” she made sure she continued doing small tasks around the sink, mopping up water, gently cleaning paintbrushes. She didn’t want him to feel interrogated or he would close up again.   
“Because she doesn’t want to be in a group with me for the Egypt project. She asked me who I wanted to be in a group with and I didn’t tell her I only wanted to be in a group with her because I don’t have any friends but she had to ask so that means she didn’t put me down to go in a group with because she doesn’t want to be my friend and she doesn’t want to learn about Egypt with me.” This came out in such a rush that Mrs Taylor was briefly worried he might keel over from lack of oxygen. She gave him a long steady look as he avoided her eye and played with the cuffs of his school jumper. Her theory had been right, and she smiled slightly to herself. If only the solution to all of her pupils’ little problems were so easy.  
Mrs Taylor was very quiet for a long time.  
“I would like to show you something,” she said eventually. Mystified, Kevin followed her to the other side of the room. She hadn’t said anything about his worries about Lin, so that must mean that he thought she didn’t want to be his friend wither, and now she wanted to show him something that would make him feel better. But it wouldn’t work. He was going to be all on his own again and nothing except friends could make that better. Mr Taylor picked up a folder, removing one of the plastic wallets from it; the one with the slips of paper that had all the names on. Kevin started to feel sick. She was going to show him that he was right, and Lin didn’t want to be in a group with him and was going to ask him who else he wanted to go with. He wanted to run away but his legs didn’t seem to work. The teacher riffled through them and pulled one out. The room suddenly seemed very far away.  
“This is the paper that Linnea wrote the names of the people she wanted to be in a group with, would you like to see? The one at the top is her first choice.” Kevin took the paper with hands that did not feel like his own. Why was she doing this to him? He had always liked Mrs Taylor and now she wanted to make him miserable. He looked at the name. And then he looked again, not sure he had read it right. The sun came out in his heart. It was his name. Right there, Kevin Harper. Lin did want to go in a group with him! She did want to be his friend! He beamed up at Mrs Taylor, suddenly thinking that, apart from Lin, she might be his favourite person in the whole world right now. Mrs Taylor smiled kindly back at him.  
“So I think maybe you can stop ignoring Linnea now, don’t you think? And maybe say sorry for being rude?” Kevin nodded vigorously. She smiled again and walked him out of the classroom. She watched him disappear into the toilet to wash the paint off his hands and, still smiling to herself, she went out into the playground to find Lin.

Lin saw her coming from across the playground and her entire body went rigid. She had been sitting with Isobel Rieker, another friendship that Mrs Taylor might have tried to encourage if it had crossed her mind, but now she was watching her teacher move towards her with something very like terror. Mrs Taylor smiled at her, and Linnea relaxed a little. Mrs Taylor made a mental note to be very gentle with Linnea; the poor girl always looked as though bears or sharks were after her! When she reached the bench, she asked Linnea if she could borrow her for a minute and the girl nodded helplessly, saying goodbye to Isobel as though she was going to death row instead of the year five classroom.  
Lin followed Mrs Taylor miserably back to the classroom. Now the questions would begin. She had wondered when Mrs Taylor was going to ask about the tree, and about magic. She didn’t want to have this conversation, but she couldn’t avoid it now. She wondered if Kevin had told Mrs Taylor that she was weird. She started to feel sick again. The pair went back into the school building just as Kevin was coming out of the toilets, and he turned to give her an enormous beaming smile. Lin’s head span. He had. He had told Mrs Taylor that she was weird, and Mrs Taylor had put two and two together and then she was going to call her parents and say that she was a danger to the other children and she should probably be home schooled and Mum and Dad would be so disappointed in her. With an increasing sense of impending doom, she followed Mrs Taylor into the classroom.

“Now Lin,” her teacher began, “can I call you Lin?”. Lin nodded mutely. Mrs Taylor smiled. “I couldn’t help noticing that things have not been going well between you and Kevin this week, and I wondered if you wanted to tell me about it?”. Lin looked up, startled. This was a turn of events, she hadn’t expected Mrs Taylor to have been monitoring her behaviour so closely! She definitely knew she was a witch; she just wished her teacher would get on and tell her this, instead of beating around the bush. Mrs Taylor was still looking at her though, so she swallowed and started to talk.

“He…um…we…I mean I…well,” she began desperately. Mrs Taylor gave her an encouraging nod. “I wanted to go in a group with him for the Egypt project,” Lin began again. “So I put him down on the list of people I wanted to be in a group with.”  
“I saw that”  
“Right….and then…um….then when we were having lunch, I asked him who he wanted to be in a group with and he didn’t say anything. He just kind of looked at me sort of funny, like I….like I turned into a frog or something. Like he knew I was really weird and he didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. And he didn’t talk to me all this week, and he wants to be friends with Jack now and he went to his house to play Pokemon yesterday and he didn’t talk to me at all. And then just now he looked at me funny again, because he knows I’m weird and he wants you to talk to me about it and now you know.” Like Kevin’s, Lin’s confession came out in one breath like rushing water. Unlike Kevin’s, however, it did not immediately make sense to Lin’s listener. 

“Know…know what dear? And what do you mean, weird?” If looks were knives, Mrs Taylor would have been impaled.

“As if you don’t KNOW!” the girl shrieked, thinking to herself that she had forgotten her manners, and then thinking that she didn’t care. “As if you don’t know that I’m a WITCH, like you don’t know that I am DANGEROUS!” Mrs Taylor blinked at her, stunned. Oh no, Lin thought dizzily to herself, I’ve really gone and done it now.   
Mrs Taylor saw the panic on her face, and thought quickly. She remembered the training she had been given by that nice lady from the Wizard Government, the…what was it…Ministry of Magic, that was it. She must not make Linnea feel frightened, or some outbursts of potentially dangerous and highly volatile magic might take place. The strange events of the past week began to make more sense, but she would worry about that in a minute.

“A…a witch? No, Linnea, I did not know that you are a witch.” Lin’s heart sank. She was really in trouble now. Mrs Taylor would wonder why she hadn’t said anything before, and there would be more questions and maybe the Minister of Magic would be called and she would be taken to Azkaban for lying to muggles what was she going to do? Mrs Taylor gave her another of her calculating looks and continued in a gentle, low voice.  
“I did not know that you are a witch, but I think I can guess why I did not know, and why no one else knows either. I did know that you were bullied the last time that you were at school. I know that you were sent to hospital because of this bullying, although we are not allowed to ask if it was a wizard hospital or a…what’s the word, maggle hospital?”

“Muggle hospital,” Lin corrected quietly.

“Right, muggle. I think I did not know that you are a witch because last time you went to school, and told people you were a witch, you were treated very unkindly by the other children. And you did not want it to be like that this time, so you didn’t tell anybody. So then when Kevin began to ignore you because he thought you did not want to be friends with him, you thought he must think that you are, as you put it, weird. And you felt very lonely, because you could not tell anyone what you were feeling. And because you are feeling very lonely, you began to lose control of yourself. And that made you feel frightened, so you lost control even more. Am I right?” Lin looked astonished.  
“I..Kevin…You….What?” Lin didn’t know where to start. “Kevin…Kevin thought I didn’t want to be friends with him? I thought he didn’t want to be friends with me!” Mrs Taylor beamed.  
“Yes, I thought it might be something like that. Kevin was in here just now, and he was very upset because he thought you didn’t want to work with him on the Egypt project. So I showed him your list of names, when you put Kevin down as your first choice, and he was very pleased abut that. He thought you didn’t want to be friends with him so he decided to leave you alone. He is very sorry about that now, he was very pleased when I told him that he was wrong, and he is going to say sorry when I have finished with you.” Lin blinked. The painful knot in her stomach loosened some. Kevin did want to be friends with her! She wasn’t going to be alone! Outside, the sun came out from behind the clouds. Mrs Taylor looked out of the window, amused.  
“So now that that is all cleared up, as it were, shall we discuss the other thing?” Lin’s face fell.  
“You can’t tell anyone! Not anyone, you can’t tell Mrs Malek, or anyone in our class or anyone in any other classes and you definitely can’t tell my mum and dad that I didn’t tell you. I really wanted them to be proud of me and they would be so ashamed if they knew I didn’t tell you. Please, Mrs Taylor, I’ll do anything, anything at all, just please don’t tell anyone!”  
Mrs Taylor smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling slightly.  
“I was not going to tell anyone. Even if I wanted to, I would not be allowed. But I do think you should tell Kevin. And Isobel. Since you all are going to be working together so much over this term, it would be better for them to know, don’t you think?” Lin shook her head vehemently.  
“No, then they definitely would think I am weird. I have never had friends before I want to keep these ones.” Mrs Taylor smiled sadly. “And wait, did you say…working together? Is Izza going to be in our group too?” The teacher nodded. The sun outside the window got brighter.  
“I have many questions about this magic of yours Linnea Burnett, but I don’t think now is the time to ask them. But I would like you to think about this very carefully. Lies are not a good basis for a friendship.” Linnea looked up at her defiantly. Her teacher smiled again.  
“I see I’m not going to be able to change your mind about this. I’d better let you get back out to break time, I think Kevin has something to say to you. If you go now, you’ll still have five minutes. Lin beamed, the knot in her stomach untying completely. She was going to have friends! She was going to work with Kevin and Izza and she wasn’t being kicked out of school! No one needed to know about her magic, and Mum and Dad didn’t need to be ashamed of her!! She gave Mrs Taylor a quick and spontaneous hug, which amused her teacher very much, and then ran out of the room.  
“Walk, Linnea, don’t run please!” Mrs Taylor called after her, laughing. Lin, abashed, slowed to speedy walk and went to find Kevin and Isobel. Maybe muggle school wasn’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magical creature and potions mentioned in this chapter:
> 
> Kelplings:  
> According to the Kelpings’ entry in Newt Scamander’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, “Kelplings are the lesser cousin of the better-known Kelpie. While their larger relatives are found in Scottish Lochs and can transform from human-shaped to horse-shaped spirits at will, Kelplings are born in human shape and pupate into horses when they reach maturity at the age of 3. Kelplings are most commonly found in Ireland, although are not uncommon in English, Scottish, Welsh and Scandinavian garden ponds. Their tail hairs are commonly used as wand cores in their native Ireland, although these wands tend to be temperamental and skittish. Also unlike Kelpies, Kelplings are not malevolent; there are no known cases of Kelplings intentionally luring people to their deaths, although they are mischievous and often form territorial rivalries with local dogs, cats and squirrels. Best removed from garden ponds by hand, and released into another source of fresh water, as this causes them (and you) the least harm. To prevent their return during mating season, a solution of vinegar, Illuminum potion and salt should be poured around the perimeter of your garden during a blue moon.”
> 
> Illuminum Potion:  
> This glow-in the dark potion has numerous uses and is non-toxic for local wildlife. Invented by Professor Quigley Chowdhury in 1783, its most common use is as an ingested light source for medical use, to illuminate organs, bones and blood vessels during surgery. When combined with the Revelio spell, it can be used as a magical alternative to a muggle x-ray (x-ray machines do not work in magical environments) and can be used to highlight blockages during colonoscopies.   
> Its household uses are manifold. It can be used for decoration in gardens, used to identify drain blockages (similar to its medical uses), can be used to make non-toxic, although unpleasant, deterrent barriers for a variety of magical creatures and is also increasingly used in the new field of Dark-Quidditch to illuminate goalposts, balls, broomsticks, players and pitch markings, allowing games to safely be played in the dark.  
> Ingredients:  
> 500g freshly-ground fireflies, or 250g of shop-bought, powdered fireflies. Powdered ingredients are much stronger than fresh; always ensure they are stored safely in a cool dry place  
> 3 litres of cold saltwater  
> 1 dragon scale, if obtainable, or dried dragon heartstring if not  
> 1kg of powdered spider-legs  
> 4 mayfly wings  
> 3 newt-egg yolks  
> 3 tail hairs from a unicorn (all hairs should be from the same unicorn if possible) is obtainable, or horse hair (ditto) if not  
> Method:  
> 1 – Combine all dry ingredients and stir slowly counter-clockwise for thirty minutes   
> 2 – Whisk egg yolks until frothy and slowly stir (clockwise) into the mixture.   
> 3 – Add the saltwater and leave outside in a full moon for three hours  
> 4 – Bring the mixture slowly to the boil, stirring clockwise for three rotations and then counter-clockwise for 6 rotations alternately  
> 5 – Incant Illuminum over the potion then bury in wet mud for four days and use as soon as possible


	4. The Battle for the Chair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the pack dynamic of The Golden Trio 2.0 is established with no assistance from its oblivious leader  
> AKA The One Where I Still Can’t Write Believable Dialogue for Ten Year Olds. This one is severely lacking in the dialogue department at the beginning. Also I am not sure if it even makes sense, or if I have successfully portrayed ten year-old angst. But you know. Not much happens in terms of plot in this one, sorry! Mainly my attempts at fluffy angsty exposition. Hope you enjoy anyway!

Kevin saw her coming from across the playground. She was beaming her lovely sunny smile and looking around, for him presumably. He suddenly felt very shy. She must think he was so stupid. Her roaming eyes found him and the beam got impossibly sunnier; even the sun seemed to beam brighter. The light of her smile burned away the fear and if he still felt shy this was not necessarily a bad thing. She went and stood near him, next to the bench he had been sitting on, and they looked at each other for a bit, neither of them quite sure how to begin. The sunny smile was peeking out from behind a cloud now, but it was still there. The real sun dimmed a bit. 

“Hello,” said Kevin quietly.  
“Hello,” she replied. And inside that hello was everything they needed to say but couldn’t. That hello was I’m sorry, and I know, and so am I and I missed you and I missed you too and let’s be friends again and yes, let’s. Linnea sat down next to him on the bench, produced a small rubber ball from her pocket, declared her intention to bounce it against the wall of the school hall and suggested that they could have a competition to see who could bounce it the most times without missing a catch. And that was that. The strange rift that had existed between them for a week closed and sealed itself up without even a hairline fracture. Somehow, during the course of this game, the idea of Isobel was carefully brought up and declared acceptable. The subject of the conversation was introduced, invited to join in the game and became part of the group in the same fluid way that blobs of wax in a lava lamp conjoin. If you had asked them afterwards, none of them would have been able to explain exactly how this had come about. They did not remember ever explicitly discussing being in a group for the Egypt project, or being friends; nor did Lin really recall ever asking Kevin explicitly if Isobel could be friends too. It was easy and natural and fun, and when there was some disparity over whether Kevin or Isobel had bounced the ball the most times without dropping it, Izza graciously conceded to Kevin, completing her induction into the group. She was not Lin, but she would do, and at least she recognised his superior position as the First Friend. Besides, playing the three of them together made Lin happy. This was important; somewhere over the course of the Week That Would Never Be Mentioned Again, Kevin had become aware that Lin’s happiness and wellbeing were as essential to him as breathing. He supposed this was what being friends was about. 

The bell rang signalling the end of breaktime, and the year fives trooped back into the classroom to fidget their way through the literacy lesson that would take them to lunchtime. That afternoon the groups for the Egypt project would be announced and then the fun would begin. Lin found herself concentrating better in that literacy lesson than she had been able to concentrate all week now that the painful knot in her belly was gone. Even learning to use apostrophes correctly was interesting to her. Mrs Taylor noted the change in her demeanour with approval. Her shoulders were no longer up round her ears, her colour had returned and the little cleft in her forehead had smoothed out. She congratulated herself on a job well done, and then returned to helping Robbie Caplan with using apostrophes. At the moment his grammar book was full of sentences like “the little dogs’ chased the fat cat’s and thats why mum’s’ so cross”. Kevin couldn’t stop smiling at Lin from across the room, even deigning occasionally flick something that was almost a smile in the direction of Isobel. But mostly he smiled at Lin. He felt so happy that she was his friend again that he thought he might float spontaneously out of his seat. 

Isobel didn’t really notice the uneven distribution of Kevin’s smiles; like him she was thinking about their new friendship arrangements. She wasn’t sure about Kevin as a friend yet. She had been new at the start of year four and hadn’t spoken to him much last year, but she thought he was a bit odd. Although in the scrupulously organised confines of Isobel’s mind, most people were a bit odd. They mostly had mums and dads, for a start. She only had mums, which seemed to her the way things ought naturally to be. People who had siblings and only one mum surely did not have enough mum to go round? She was dimly aware that dads had to have a role somewhere in the process of making babies, although her shadowy understanding of the reproductive process did not supply her with satisfactory information about what this role might be. Lin also was odd, having not only a mum and a dad but also a godfather whom she saw on a regular enough basis for him to count. This seemed to Isobel a gluttonous overabundance of dads. She turned this thought over in her mind with satisfaction. Gluttonous was a word that she had found in her latest perusal (another excellent word which she liked to use as much as possible) of the dictionary, and she liked it immensely. Isobel collected words the way some children her age collected scabby knees, or interestingly-shaped pebbles or stickers. Perhaps this made her odd too. Maybe this was why she liked Lin, who had told her yesterday that she liked words too, especially ones that weren’t English. Isobel had been very impressed with this; this was a whole new level of word-magpie behaviour that she hadn’t reached yet. But unlike herself, Lin was also sad, Isobel thought. Even though her new friend had seemed much happier since Kevin and she and Lin had become a group, she still felt that Lin carried sadness around inside her like a little pebble. Despite , or perhaps because of, her ferocious intelligence, Isobel was a motherly young person and made it her mission in life to look after people. Her quick mind produced another train of thought, which set off for the distant destination of ‘what can I do to make Lin happier?’. It was not until Mrs Taylor called on her to answer a question about correct use of clauses that Isobel realised she wasn’t paying attention. She hadn’t even noticed that the subject of the lesson had changed! 

The rest of the literacy lesson was uneventful. Lin felt embarrassed for her friend when she struggled to answer the question about clauses, but Izza seemed not to mind too much so Lin tried not to either. The bell rang for lunchtime and the first official test of friendship for the newly formed trio of friends prepared to commence. Lin, Kevin and Izza collected their lunches from their bags and went into the hall. Other students, quicker off the mark, had already taken up most of the spaces, except for three seats at the end of one of the tables, with one empty seat opposite two that were next to each other. Lin looked at Kevin and Izza questioningly.  
“We could maybe go and find a table outside if you want? It is a bit noisy in here,” she yelled over the din. Kevin and Isobel shrugged.  
“I think this will be ok. We can go outside to play afterwards,” Isobel replied, also raising her voice slightly.  
“We could play the bouncy ball game again, maybe? Or we could show Izza the Ladybird House?” Kevin suggested graciously; further evidencing Isobel’s complete induction into the group. The Ladybird House was a private game. Lin nodded and began pushing her way through the throng, a combination of dinner ladies, the queue for hot dinners and students who were taking great delight in flouting the rule that unless you were walking to a table you had to sit DOWN, Jessica, you’re getting custard everywhere someone is going to fall over. Lin sat in the seat with an empty spot next to it, and the battle for Supreme Friend began. Who would sit next to Lin? Who would be relegated to sitting opposite her? Lin, really was the lynchpin of the group; Isobel and Kevin had no objection to one another’s presence, but it really was just an unavoidable part of being friends with Lin. So how could they decide who would sit where? Lin watched, confused as her two friends stood awkwardly beside her, neither sitting down, looking at each other the way a matador might look at a bull. Having never really had friends before, or at least not friends who might be willing to fight to death for the privilege of sitting next to her at lunchtime, it did not occur to her that she might have made an error in her choice of seat.   
“Aren’t you going to sit down?,” Lin asked, through a mouthful of sandwich. Kevin and Isobel didn’t answer her. The Battle for the Chair had begun. Kevin made the first move.  
“I’ll sit next to Lin, Izza, and then you can sit opposite us. It will be easier for you two to talk if you are facing each other.”  
“Yes,” his opponent countered, “but we had a long talk yesterday. You and Lin haven’t talked properly for a whole entire week! I’ll sit next to her and you can sit opposite and then you can catch up.”  
Kevin was momentarily stumped. She was good. He changed tack.  
“How about I sit next to Lin today and then tomorrow you can sit next to Lin. That way Lin can tell you about all our ideas for the Egypt project.” It wasn’t a strong argument, and his antagonist knew it.  
“Or, I could sit next to Lin today, and you could sit next to her tomorrow. We don’t even know if we are going to be in a group together for the Egypt project. You don’t want to give me all your good ideas if I am going to be in a different group,” she finished triumphantly. Kevin groaned internally. It was a good point.  
By this time Lin was halfway through her second sandwich and was thoroughly confused by the polite bickering.  
“Why does it matter who sits where? Oops, sorry Izza,” as she sprayed marmitey crumbs all over her friend. “Kevin, you sit in this chair,” pointing at the one beside her, “since you’re close to that one anyway, Izza, you can sit in that one,” pointing at the one opposite, “and then we can all eat our lunch and go and play.” Kevin tried not to smile smugly as he slide into the coveted seat beside Lin and tucked into his sandwiches (ham today). Isobel resisted the urge to sulk as she sat opposite Lin. Lin did not notice anything amiss, having made a start on the enormous slice of pumpkin pie her mother had put in her lunchbox that morning to cheer her up. Lin didn’t think she needed cheering up anymore, but mum’s pumpkin pie was to die for!  
Kevin was slower eating his lunch that day than he had ever been before. Even before The Rift, he had always wolfed down his food, the quicker to get outside and play or explore or just sit somewhere that wasn’t a plastic chair in a hall full of loudly chattering schoolmates. Today, however, he found himself unwilling to leave. It was enough for him to be sitting beside Lin, his Lin, his friend, having her smile at him and talk to him (and to Isobel, but that was alright. He could be gracious in victory). He found that he liked to look at her very much. He had not noticed this before. What he could not help noticing, which displeased him very much, was that Isobel also seemed to like looking at Lin. Even when Lin was talking to him, he found that Isobel would watch Lin talking, smiling when she smiled, laughing when she laughed. And Lin seemed to like looking at Isobel too! He felt much better when she was looking at him and talking to him and would like it much better if she would just ignore Isobel altogether please. He began to wonder if he had made a terrible mistake in allowing KevinandLin to become KevinandLinandIzza. But talking to Isobel made Lin happy. And Lin being happy made Kevin happy. And Isobel did have good ideas for games. She was currently describing a game where two people stood on the stepping stones and the other person was the Troll and you had to try and get past the Troll to get to the other side. Having read a book by someone called Newt Scamander, who knew lots of things about magical animals, that he had found in a charity shop, Kevin found himself thinking that a real Troll would probably just knock you off the stepping stones. But it did sound like a fun game. His thoughts went round and round like this for the remainder of lunchtime, even when he was the Troll and he won the game by knocking Isobel off the stepping stones. If he did this a little more violently than strictly necessary, Isobel either did not notice or did not mind. Lin admonished him, gently, for being so rough, but then when she was the Troll she put her arms around him to stop him getting past her. They had never hugged before. It felt like a victory.


	5. Thursday Afternoon Funtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I had to make up a lot of Ancient Egyptian wizard stuff because I didn’t have time to do a massive amount of research. But making up stuff is fun! Also had to mess with canon just a wee bit, to make everything hang together nicely. Next chapter, we get to see what Luna has been up to since leaving Hogwarts, and I get to make stuff up about her husband Rolf and sons Lorcan and Lysander. They are canon, although I have made the boys a bit younger than I think they are in canon. You will see why next chapter.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy what is basically me reminiscing about 'topic' in primary school. I can smell glue sticks from here!

After lunch, Lin, Kevin and Izza returned to the classroom, where Kevin reluctantly went over to his table while Lin and Izza went to sit at theirs. He tried not to feel bitter about this. He could share Lin. He could. There was a buzz of anticipation in year five that afternoon. Mrs Taylor was going to tell people which groups they were going to be in!

“Good afternoon, year five,” Mrs Taylor called above the chatter.  
“Good afternoon, Mrs Taylor,” the class monotoned back.   
“Right, I’ve had a look at the little lists you made for me last week, and I think I’ve managed to put you all in groups for your projects. So what I’d like you to do is, stand up.” 30 chairs obediently scraped on the vinyl floor. “And come and stand over here on the carpet,” there was a brief kerfuffle as everyone squeezed past tables and chairs in a bid to stand next to their friends. “And then when I call out the groups I want you to go and stand with those people, alright?”  
“Yes, Miss,” the class droned.   
“Lovely.”  
Lin felt as though her limbs were buzzing. She couldn’t be sure why she was so excited, but it seemed to be doing interesting things to the wind chimes by the window, which were changing shape. She giggled to herself and tried to avoid Mrs Taylor’s eye in case she burst out laughing properly. 

Kevin and Izza were less relaxed. Kevin was fairly sure that he was going to get to work with Lin after his conversation with Mrs Taylor, but he worried that Izza would not be in a group with them. He wouldn’t have minded that at all, except that he knew Lin would be sad, and he didn’t want Lin to be sad. Izza had not had the assurances that Lin and Kevin had had, and was worried that she would be separated from her new friends barely before they had had a chance to become a group. She hopped nervously from foot to foot. She was not sure why she was nervous. She didn’t usually get nervous. Lin’s new presence in her life seemed to be doing strange things to her mood.   
But at last, at last, their agony of excitement and nerves were soothed, and Mrs Taylor called above the renewed chatter of recently-assembled groups “Lin, Kevin and Isobel, I would like you to go and stand over by the window please!”. Kevin cheered, and even Izza allowed herself a small “yes!” of victory. Lin beamed at them both and went to stand triumphantly by the window. Kevin was unable to contain himself.

“I really really really want to do about magic for our project, I know where I can find lots of books about Ancient Egyptian wizards in the library and I have a Necronomicon, and also an Amulet of Samarkand and please can we do magic please please please?” Izza laughed joyfully and assured him that that was fine by her. They turned to look at Lin expectantly. The heaviness in her stomach started to return. It was such a risk. But it would make Kevin and Izza happy. And surely she could be careful? She nodded slowly.  
With the mutual agreement of the group secured, Kevin released the full enthusiasm of his passion for magic, and seized a felt-tip pen and piece of A4 paper to begin brainstorming.  
Mrs Taylor beamed approvingly at the them, over the head of Ming Li, who had come up to ask to go the toilet. She thought that the friendship between Lin, Kevin and Isobel would be very good for all three of them.   
Isobel watched, a little bemused, as Kevin rattled off some facts about Ancient Egyptian magic. She hadn’t expected him to be so knowledgeable about it, usually she expected herself to be the cleverest person in the group. It made her feel a little out of her depth. She looked over at Lin, who looked a little uncomfortable. She kept rubbing her stomach and muttering to herself, although over Kevin’s chatter and the general noise in the room she couldn’t make out what it was. Kevin didn’t seem to have noticed; he was now talking about the question hey were going to answer in their project.

“I thought we maybe could do like what actual magic people were doing compared to what the non-magic people thought magic was like. Like the non-magic people, what are they called, Muggles, thought there were gods who like made the sun move around and stuff but actually the magic people were making spells and charms to keep people safe and were being hired to put curses on pyramids and stuff.” He took a breath. Izza had never heard him talk to much before. She had also never heard the word ‘like’ used incorrectly in a sentence so many times. She decided not to say anything though; she was still being initiated into the group and didn’t want to alienate anyone. Alienate was a good word. She wished it meant making people into aliens, though, rather than making people feel left out. Lin listened to Kevin’s chatter with rising panic. Why couldn’t they do mummies or irrigation or art or anything else? Why had she agreed to study magic? She was bound to give herself away sooner or later! She became aware that both Kevin and Izza were looking at her and realised she hadn’t really been listening. 

“Sorry, what were you saying?” she asked politely. Kevin looked put out.  
“I was saying we could maybe do acting. One person could be the narrator and then one person could pretend to do actual magic and the other person could pretend to do stuff that the not magic people thought was magic,”  
“NO!” Lin cried before she could stop herself. The idea of even pretending to do magic, when anything she said or did could cause someone to sprout extra heads or something, was appalling. Some nearby groups looked over with interest. She took a deep breath.

“I mean, I don’t really like drama stuff very much. Could we maybe do something else?” Izza gave her a strange look, and Kevin looked hurt. Lin groaned internally; what had she done? She tried to backtrack.  
“Maybe I could do the narrating,” she conceded, “and then Izza you could do the non-magic stuff and Kevin can do the magic stuff because he knows so much about it?” The group relaxed, especially Kevin, who had been enjoying grand visions of wearing a wizard’s robe and casting spells on his classmates. Izza gently took the paper from him and began to jot down their ideas, while Lin stared out of the window. Fluffy clouds were gathering in front of the sun. It was decided that the ‘acting stuff’ would only be a small part of the overall presentation. Izza wanted to make a Necronomicon, which would be kind of a project book that they could hand into Mrs Taylor, and Lin, who liked drawing, wanted to make posters that they could read from.   
Having decided what they wanted to do, Lin, Kevin and Izza went to confirm their topic with Mrs Taylor, who approved it with a sideways look at Lin, who was looking at her feet. She hasn’t told them, then, she thought to herself. She wondered if she ought to have a word with her about it but decided to wait. She would tell them when she was ready. What harm could it do? Once all of the groups had had their ideas approved, Mrs Taylor gathered the class together again to hand out a ticklist of things that needed to be included in the project, and then led to them to the computer room to start doing some research. Lin started to panic again. Her parents had a computer at home, an ancient box machine with a keyboard that sounded like horse’s hooves, but she had never used it. She didn’t trust muggle technology. She knew that lots of very old books, and some wizard documents had been put on a line somewhere (a washing line, perhaps? She would need to find out more about that) after the new Wizard-Muggle Relations Act, so that muggles could look up things about wizards, and lots of wizard inventors had made computers that didn’t break in magical environments, but she still didn’t want to learn how to use one. They looked scary. But how could she explain to her friends that she didn’t know how to use a computer? All muggle children seemed to be able to use one, no problem. Her feet dragged over the threshold as she followed Kevin and Izza to a computer.   
“Come on Lin, I want to show you this really cool website that I found about necromancy in Cairo!” Kevin called. Oh, Good, Lin thought to herself, slightly bitterly. She tried to summon up some enthusiasm for Kevin’s sake.

“Coming!” She called back, picking up her pace a bit. When she arrived at the computer desk, Izza and Kevin were looking at a page on the screen about necromancers in Ancient Egypt, and how the work they had done had inspired people like Grindelwald and Voldemort to do all sorts of awful things. Feeling sicker than ever, Lin tried to tune it out. One of her mum’s brothers had been killed by You-Know-Who before she was born (he had been a member of the Order of the Phoenix) and even though You-Know-Who was gone now, killed by Harry Potter, thinking about him still made her feel angry and frightened. She focused on writing down the things that Izza and Kevin were saying without actually thinking about the words. This was working very well until Kevin and Izza found a webpage about the Order of the Phoenix. There they all were, her Uncle, and the Potters, and Albus Dumbledore and there was even a photograph of You-Know-Who himself, pale and waxy and awful. Lin thought she was going to be sick. She wasn’t even sure why they were looking at that website, it didn’t have anything to do with Ancient Egypt! When she mentioned this, Izza pointed out that some of the spells that the Order had used against You-Know-Who had been invented by the Ancient Egyptian wizards.

“The list Mrs Taylor gave us said we have to talk about the lasting impact the Ancient Egyptians had on the modern world; we can talk about how those Egyptian wizards helped to save all our lives!” Izza enthused. Lin swallowed and tried to smile. It was true; she thought she remembered her grandma saying that Expelliarmus had been created in the duelling pits in Alexandria, and wasn’t that the spell Harry Potter had used to finally kill You-Know-Who? Still, seeing all those famous names written down, especially the ones that had been or were her relatives, was uncomfortable. The lights in the ceiling flickered and Lin clenched her jaw. She must not lose control. She mustn’t. She could feel Mrs Taylor looking at her, and made a show of talking to Kevin about a book she was going to get out of the library about Ancient Egyptian clothes to help her make his robes. He turned and beamed at her, and that made her feel a bit better. She had worried that her outburst earlier would make him think something was up, but he didn’t seem to notice anything strange going on. When they were finished with the Order of the Phoenix website, Lin thought she would be safe, but then they found a wizarding census and got distracted by looking up local wizarding families. As they scrolled on the thing that was called a mouse (she wasn’t sure why it was called this because she had checked carefully to make sure that there wasn’t a mouse trapped in that little plastic dome) down the page, Lin started to panic in earnest. She knew they would have to find out at some point, but they couldn’t find out like this, not now. Everything had been going so well! The halogen bulbs in the ceiling flashed on and off like strobe lights, and lightning-streaked rain started to lash the windows of the computer room, making everyone, Lin included, jump. There was a metallic crash, and then a pop, and the lights and computers went off. Lin blinked, rooted to her seat even as the class started to panic. Had she done that? Mrs Taylor called for silence and the wailing and crying quieted into a subdued buzz.

“I think we all need to go back to the classroom now, year five, for the last half an hour of our afternoon. I’ll leave you with Mr Fisher while I go and find out what’s going on,” she told them soothingly, leading them back through the school. Lin felt very cold and afraid. It had happened again. She had been in a situation she didn’t want to be in and something had happened, something that could have hurt someone, to get her out of it. She hoped that no serious damage had been done, and she hoped that she hadn’t done it. Kevin was hugely excited. He bounced all the way back to class, buzzing with their new project and the excitement of “a real, actual power cut!”. Mrs Taylor raised her eyebrows at Lin as they went back into the classroom, but Lin shrugged and shook her head. She didn’t know that it had been her. Mrs Taylor smiled in relief, and left them with Mr Fisher the classroom assistant. Upon her return, she announced that the wind had blown the Arial on the side of the building over, and it had cut through the power lines.   
“Since we can’t use the computers and the weather is too bad to go outside, I would like to bring show-and-tell forward a bit. We’ll do that for the rest of the afternoon.” She collected the candles that they normally used for RE lessons, and lit them in a circle to make a lovely warm glow. Lin started to relax. She couldn’t possibly have blown the Arial over; she didn’t even know what an Arial was! And anyway, she couldn’t have been upset enough to cause the storm, it was still raging out there even though she felt much better now. It was just a coincidence. Just a coincidence. She had forgotten all about show and tell, so she didn’t have anything to show. She sat back and watched Jack Taylor telling about his trip to the seaside at the weekend, Ming Li showing a robin’s egg shell she had found on a walk with her mum and Nina Adewale showed the special hair wrap her auntie had brought back for her from a trip to South Africa. The longer the storm went on, the more relaxed Lin started to feel. Her baby-magic had never been this strong or long-lasting before, she had probably made the lights flicker but couldn’t have had anything to do with the power cut. That was good to know. Once show and tell was over (Peter Bishop finished off by showing a picture he had drawn for his grandma who was in the hospital), year five groped around their pegs to find their coats and bags and waited by the classroom door to be let out. Kevin and Izza wriggled through the crowd of over-excited children to be near her, Kevin bursting to tell her about a new idea he had had.  
“Lin, Lin, I had an idea for what we should be called!”   
“What we should be called?” Lin asked, puzzled. Surely they already had names? Was this some strange muggle tradition no one had told her about?  
“Yeah, all the theatre people have to have names. We had that visit from the Wandering Beavers last year, do you remember Izza?” She nodded. “And if we are going to do acting in our project, we’re a theatre group, right? So I think we should have a name.”  
“Ok, what’s your idea then?” Lin asked, a little nervous.  
“The Necromancers!” Kevin announced proudly. The girls looked at him incredulously.   
“The Necromancers?” Izza asked uncertainly. “Aren’t Necromancers bad? They bring dead people back to life and stuff don’t they?” Lin nodded her agreement.   
“Definitely bad; You-Kn- I mean Voldemort used to do necromancy stuff, he used to have whole armies of dead people!”  
“Alright then,” Kevin said crossly, “We’ll be the Good Necromancers! We can bring people’s dead grandmas and things back to talk to them for a bit, so everyone knows they’re alright, and then make them be dead again. A bit like a psychologist, but with actual dead people to talk to.”  
“A psychologist?” Lin said doubtfully, “Don’t you mean a psychic?” Kevin looked abashed.  
“Oh. Maybe. Anyway, one of them people who says they can talk to dead folks, except we would bring the dead folks back and people could actually talk to them. It’ll be wicked!” He looked so excited that Lin and Izza didn’t have the heart to poo-poo the idea, although they exchanged the sort of look that young girls sometimes share when they think a boy in their company is being silly or childish. When the bell finally rang for the end of the day, the newly formed Good Necromancers had agreed that they would meet up once a week after school to do Necromancy and to discuss Happenings of an Unusual Nature. Kevin had wanted to call it ‘weird stuff’ but Izza had thought this was better, and seeing that Lin was inclined to agree, he had given in.  
Lin was uncomfortable about this whole arrangement; there seemed to be a lot of almost-magic involved, that could expose her or put someone in danger. She would need to talk to her godfather about controlling her baby-magic; he was a magical botanist but he always had good advice about things like this. Maybe she could go and see him tomorrow, as she wasn’t going to be at school. She hugged Kevin and Izza goodbye with a preoccupied air, and didn’t notice both her friends blushing to the roots of their hair and smiling so big their faces looked likely to split. She went to put the question to her mum, who was huddled under a heavy raincoat and an umbrella. She laughed and told her daughter that she must be psychic.  
“There was something that Uncle Rolf and Auntie Luna wanted to talk to you about, so we are all going to go over tomorrow for lunch.”  
“Oh no,” Lin groaned, “is Auntie Luna going to make plimpie soup?” Lin thought Auntie Luna was wonderful, soft spoken and gentle and kind, but she really was a terrible cook. Her mother laughed again.  
“No love, your dad is going to cook. Auntie Luna isn’t feeling very well; the boys have had dragon pox and they’ve passed it on to her, so she will probably be in bed a lot of the time.”  
Lin nodded, relieved. She would ask Uncle Rolf and Auntie Luna what to do about the baby-magic, they must have some tricks they used on Lorcan and Lysander that she could use herself.  
Mrs Taylor watched her go with a benevolent smile. She was glad that the girl had got the spring back into her step, although she would need to make sure to watch out for magical outbursts like the one with the lights this afternoon. She thought that they distressed Lin more than they bothered anyone else, and resolved to help her feel more comfortable at school. Especially since this project about magic was likely to bring about more tricky situations for her. The teacher waved the last of her pupils goodbye, and went back into her classroom to start on the evening’s marking.


	6. Of Plimpie Soup and Roast Potatoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin goes to visit her godparents and gets a nasty surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello lovely readers (there are now 11 of you which is more people than have ever been allowed to read anything I've written before, so....good for you!)
> 
> You will not be surprised to know that I am currently in quarantine, which means more time to procrastinate doing my dissertation. Hence another chapter of this. Here there be Lovegoods (well, just the one Lovegood, actually. Luna) Which means I am suddenly learning the great trials and tribulations of trying to make characters not out of character from canon. So, I hope grown-up Luna is not too out of character. 
> 
> And I hope you enjoy this chapter! xx

Lin and her parents arrived at her godparents’ house later than they had planned. Lin’s dad had discovered an infestation of Cornish Pixies in the shed, and had unwittingly released them into the garden. It had taken several hours to immobilise and dispose of them. Mum was in a flap about being late, and kept brushing imaginary dust off Lin’s coat. Secretly, Lin thought that Uncle Rolf and Auntie Luna probably wouldn’t notice that they were late anyway, but she didn’t say so. The Scamanders didn’t have a doorbell. What they did have was a series of noisy wooden wind chimes that would clatter eerily when you pulled the rope by the door. Lin had always quite liked the windchimes, but Mum said they were frivolous. Lin didn’t know what frivolous meant, but she didn’t think it was a good thing. She reached out to pull the rope and was rewarded with a lovely deep clattering noise. 

“David, will you hurry up, please!” Mum yelled to Dad, who was unloading lunch from the car. He jumped, hit his head on the lid of the boot and cursed loudly.

“For Merlin’s sake, love, they’ve probably forgotten what time we were meant to be coming anyway!” He emerged from behind the car carefully levitating a series of steaming containers of food. “Rolf was always late for class when we were at school, and Luna’s not much better. Don’t fuss.” Mum huffed impatiently and stood, fidgeting, on the step. Lin could still hear the wind chimes reverberating around the house and through the garden to Uncle Rolf’s workshed. Mum was properly grumbling and even Dad was looking cross when they heard yowling from behind them, the skitter of paws on gravel and a cheerful cry of “well met, weary travellers!” from Uncle Rolf. Gilly and Mayfly the greyhounds came tearing up the drive, jumping up to put their paws on Lin’s shoulders and spraying Mum and Dad with gravel. Lin giggled and stroked their silky ears.

“Get down, you dozy animals!” Rolf chuckled, letting himself, Lorcan and Lysander in through the gate the dogs had jumped over. “Greetings, Dunnes of all shapes and sizes!” he bellowed, catching Lin’s parents together in a bone-crushing hug. The containers of food wobbled precariously as Dad dropped his wand. “Whoops, sorry!” Rolf caught them clumsily with a levitation spell and gravy spilled across the driveway.

“Hello, Rolf,” said Dad weakly. Uncle Rolf descended on Lin next.

“Merlin’s beard, is that little Linnea? Good gravy, Finnula, she’s shooting up like a beanstalk! Must get it from your side of the family, eh?” he grinned, giving Mum a conspiratorial elbow in the ribs. Mum chuckled, unable to resist Uncle Rolf’s charm. Lin found herself lifted from the ground, inspected thoroughly and then returned to the gravel with a bump. Mum and Dad were making similar inspections of the twins, who looked as uncomfortable as Lin felt. The dogs were making quick work of the gravy that had been spilled earlier; Lin was relieved that they were not adding to the noise. Child inspections complete, Mum suggested quietly that they ought to go inside.

“Yes, yes, of course, come in, come in!” he ushered his guests into the house. “Boys, see that Auntie and Uncle and Lin get a drink, alright? I’ve got to wrangle these girls back into their kennel!” and then he was off, bounding after Gilly and Mayflower. Mum and Dad made camp in the kitchen, insisting that they could help themselves to drinks, and Lin was left with the twins in the living room. They were the same age as she was, but she towered over them.

“Um,” Lorcan began.

“Hello,” Lin decided to try.

“Yes, hello,” was Lysander’s contribution.

“How. Um. How are you?” Lorcan shrugged and his brother nodded uncomfortably.

“Yes, we’re fine.”

“Um. Are you feeling better? After the dragonpox?” once again it was Lorcan who spoke.

“We still have to take this horrible medicine that tastes like gillyweed, and mum is making us drink Plimpie soup” Lin nodded sympathetically. She remembered having dragonpox the previous year and having gallons of the stuff hand-delivered.

“Mum’s getting better, too,” said Lysander quietly. “She wanted to get up and make lunch, but Dad wouldn’t let her. He said she need to recoo-. Um. Recoop…”

“Recuperate,” Lorcan finished impatiently. “He said she needed to recuperate, Zander.” Lysander nodded apologetically. Lin had forgotten about this. She sometimes thought that the twins could read each other’s minds.

With the conversation exhausted, Lin sat awkwardly on the sofa opposite the twins, wondering what she could do to make the silence less uncomfortable. She was saved by the arrival of Auntie Luna, who floated dreamily down the stairs in a long kaftan. She was wearing a necklace of what looked like onions and radishes. Lin wondered if this was to help with the dragon pox or if it was a fashion statement.

“Hello, Auntie Luna,” Lin said shyly. Luna started.

“Oh, hello Linnea, dear. I didn’t know you were coming today?”

Lysander went to stand by his mother.

“Yes you did, Mum,” he reminded her gently. “You were going to make plimpie soup, but Dad said you had to stay in bed,” he prompted.

“Oh yes, that’s right. Was that today? I thought it was next week. Well, it’s good to see you, my love. Are your parents with you?” Lin nodded.

“They’re in the kitchen getting lunch ready,” Lin told her. Luna beamed and floated away to greet them.

Lorcan huffed and sat down heavily on the sofa again.

“Honestly she’d forget her own head if it wasn’t attached to her shoulders,” he said crossly. Lin thought this sounded like something he had heard a grown up say.

“She’s poorly, Lor,” Lysander admonished quietly. “Anyway, she didn’t really forget. She’s just busy a lot. The Quibbler’s going back into print,” he added for Lin’s benefit.

“Dunno why she bothers, no one reads it,” Lorcan grumbled. “It just makes her all busy. That’s why she wants us to go to sch-“

“We’re not supposed to tell about that yet!” Lysander chided his brother. Lorcan scowled but didn’t say anything. Lin wondered what they were not supposed to be telling about, but decided not to ask. After a minute or two of silence, Lin gave up trying to get them to talk properly and wandered away to the kitchen to talk to the grownups. She hoped she might be able to get her godparents alone, to ask them about the baby magic without upsetting Mum and Dad. Rolf had returned to the house and was reminiscing loudly with Dad about their time at Hogwarts. Mum and Auntie Luna were laughing and talking together while they exchanged photos of their respective offspring. Lin waited awkwardly in the doorway. Her mother noticed her first.

“There you are, sweetheart, will you come and help with the food?” Lin nodded and went to dish some steaming stew onto a plate.

“Excellent grub, Davey,” Uncle Rolf bellowed, rubbing his hands together. Dad smiled and went to take the roast potatoes out of the oven.

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, David,” Luna said in her soft voice. “I could very easily have made some soup.” Rolf tutted.

“We talked about this, my love. You’ve not been well. You needed the extra rest you were out like a candle when I took the boys out this morning!” His wife nodded.

“I missed the sunrise,” she said sadly.

“Well, it’s a good thing I took some photos of it for you, eh my little larkspur,” Rolf chuckled. Luna gave a cry of delight and launched herself into his arms.

“You are a darling, darling man!” she beamed.

Dad gave Mum a Look that Lin thought probably said something like ‘ _you never call me a darling, darling man’._ Mum gave him a Look in return that said something along the lines of ‘ _if you take photos of nice things for me maybe I will’._ Lin decided grown-ups were weird and went to take the plates to the table. The twins were still sitting on the sofa, and Lin found herself feeling very cross. She was a _guest_ why did she have to help lay the table and they were just sitting there like….like…like two huge _toads._ The windows rattled slightly, and Lin froze. Her mother turned away from her conversation with Auntie Luna.

“Lin? You alright, love?”

Lin swallowed around the suddenly huge lump in her throat.

“Yeah I’m-I’m fine,” she said weakly and continued to the table. She determinedly didn’t look at the twins. It was going to be a long day.

Once the table was laid and the food arranged on it, the group sat down to eat. As usual, the children were relegated to the far end of the table from the adults (and, therefore, the majority of the food) to ‘talk among themselves’. This was not a problem for Lorcan and Lysander, who completely ignored their guest in favour of whispering and giggling together in what Lin thought of as twin-speak. Thus released from conversational obligations, Lin tucked into her lunch. She was just wondering if Auntie Luna and Uncle Rolf knew anything about Ancient Egyptian magic that she, Kevin and Izza could use in their presentation when she became aware that someone was talking to her.

“Sorry Mum, what were you saying?” she asked guiltily. Her mother tutted at her.

“Not me, Auntie Luna. What’s the matter with you?” Lin flushed.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“No need to apologise, sweet girl, I know that look. Wrackspurts got you?” Auntie Luna asked her sympathetically.

“Um…yeah, something like that,” Lin agreed. Her mother rolled her eyes nut didn’t say anything. Lin knew that trying to talk Auntie Luna out of believing in wrackspurts was a battle lost long ago.

“Ah, bless you my love. We ought to get some of those ceiling fans, Rolfie, you know, the ones that spin around. Then we wouldn’t have problems like this anymore,” Auntie Luna turned to her husband. Uncle Rolf nodded seriously, taking her hand and kissing it.

“I shall look into it my love,” he replied. Lin could see the twins making being-sick faces out of the corner of her eye. She wondered how she would feel about her parents being all lovey-dovey like that.

“ _Anyway,”_ said her mother, firmly taking the reins of the conversation and steering it in a more sensible direction. “Auntie Luna was asking how it is being at muggle school.” Lin’s stomach dropped. She had hoped this wasn’t going to come up, but now that she thought about it, how could it not?

“It-uh…it’s. It’s fine. Thank you. All fine. Good, actually. Yeah. Good. Um.” Her mother sighed crossly.

“Honestly she’s been coming home every day full of stories about all the things she’s got up to and all the friend’s she’s made for weeks, and now you ask her about it and she dries up like a bezoar!” Auntie Luna shushed her.

“It’s not easy to be asked something after you’ve had contact with wrackspurts!” she said in her lovely gentle voice. “You’re doing very well, Linnea.” Lin smiled weakly.

“And how is it being a witch? At muggle school, I mean?” Uncle Rolf chimed in. Lin felt the odd buzzing under her skin that told her a magical accident was imminent and clenched her fists.

“It’s fine. Not like last time,” she told him, thinking this was why he had asked. Every non-muggle in her life had been anxious about a repeat of ‘last time’. Uncle Rolf nodded. Auntie Luna nodded. The boys looked expectantly at their parents. Her parents smiled encouragingly at her. Lin began to get the uncomfortable impression that everyone else at the table knew something she didn’t know. Was this what Lorcan and Lysander were not supposed to be telling her about?

“Linnea, my love, your mum may have told you that the Quibbler is going back into print-“

“Actually, Lysander told me,” Lin interrupted, uncertain how the Quibbler was connected with school.

“Ah, ok. Yes, well, anyway, it’s going back into print. Someone who used to help my father with it sometimes is opening a printing company in the city, and she wants muggle and wizard magazines and journals to work together in the same space.” Lin nodded, trying to look interested. She wasn’t really sure that she needed to know this. “That means that Rolf and I are both going to be working in the city,” her godmother continued. “And obviously Lysander and Lorcan can’t stay at home by themselves all day-“ Mutinous looks from both twins suggested that they _could_ stay at home by themselves all day, actually “-so we thought it might be nice if they went to muggle school with you.

The bottom dropped out of Lin’s stomach. Her face went very pale and then very red as she choked on her mouthful of roast potatoes.

“They _WHAT?!”_


	7. The Truth Will Set You Free (Probably) - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin finally talks to Kevin and Izza about all the secrets she's been keeping. It does not go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> \- Vague allusion to intrusive and suicidal thoughts (it's very vague, and very brief, but just in case)  
> \- Lin is in a pretty bad brain-place in this chapter, so be careful of that if it could be triggering for you.

Today was the day. She had been dreading it for weeks. She had tried telling them that starting a new school halfway through term Wasn’t Done. She had tried pretending that everyone at school had suddenly become Not Okay with having a witch in their midst. She had even tried pretending that the school was closing down. To no avail. So today, Lorcan and Lysander were starting school.

On Monday morning, she skipped walking to school with Izza and Kevin in favour of getting to class early, so she could warn Mrs Taylor. She was Worried about this. She knew that Mrs Taylor would tell her not to worry; that she simply needed to talk to Izza and Kevin, and they would understand about her being a witch, and everything would be fine.

But everything would not be fine.

This was not because she thought her friends wouldn’t accept her for being a witch. What probably amounted to hours and hours of conversation had pretty solidly convinced her that they thought magic was fantastic, and that magic users were therefore Extremely Cool. No, the problem was that by now, she had been lying (and not just lying by omission, but full on lying) to the only friends she had ever had for months. Sometimes it was smallish things, like suggesting that the Census put out by the Muggle and Wizard Relations Department with a list of all the witches and wizards in the country would not be useful for their project, so that they wouldn’t see her name on it. Some of it was big things like telling her friends that she would probably be going to the local secondary modern with Izza and Kevin in 18 months, when she knew full well that her name had been on the Hogwarts waiting list since the day she was born. The lie had become heavier and heavier and more unbearable the longer she had carried it, but she had comforted herself that she could maybe pretend she was a muggleborn witch, and then the lie wouldn’t matter anymore. But now Lorcan and Lysander were coming to school with her, and there was no way for her to prevent the truth coming out.

As predicted, Mrs Taylor was not much help.

“It seems to me that your choice is simple, my dear,” she said calmly. “You will simply have to tell Isobel and Kevin what you have not been telling them. I’m sure they will understand, especially when you explain why you didn’t tell them. They will know, as well as I do, that you didn’t do it to hurt them.” Lin smiled painfully at her but didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel able to tell her teacher that Izza and Kevin were only half the problem – Lorcan and Lysander would almost certainly find out about her lie, and then they would tell their parents, who would tell her parents. And they would be so, so ashamed of her. They had been so proud when she said she was ready to go back to school, and now they would be sad and ashamed, and her mother would cry, and her father would look solemn, and then-and then….and then what? She couldn’t even begin to imagine what her life would look like after that. She would go to Hogwarts eventually, she supposed, but it didn’t feel as if the nebulous future she had been working towards would ever actually arrive. She had a vague feeling she would never see Hogwarts, although it was too scary to think about why that might be.

Thoughts like this had been popping into her head more and more often over the last few weeks. She had started imagining that prisoners in Azkaban might feel like this, like there was no point in their life anymore. She barely saw Izza and Kevin outside school anymore. They worked on the project sometimes, and she walked to school with them in the mornings, but she never really felt like going to the park, or the library with them anymore. She barely had enough energy to go to school.

She was buzzing with energy today, though. She had woken up almost two hours before she had needed to, barely eaten any breakfast, and run to school to get to Mrs Taylor before lessons started. And now she was sitting on a bench in the playground, anxiously bouncing her leg. She was vaguely aware that the street-lights around school were all short-circuiting, and that it looked like it was going to rain. Her eyes were trained on the gate, praying that Izza and Kevin would arrive before Lorcan and Lysander.

*

Mrs Taylor watched her anxiously from the classroom window. She had understood from her first proper conversation with Lin in September that her relationship with her own magic and muggles, was a source of great stress to her. She had, mistakenly, she now realised, assumed that a bit of kind good advice, and some good experiences with muggle children would set her right. She was beginning to become concerned that the problem went much deeper than she had imagined, and that something terrible was going to happen that she might have been able to prevent. Mrs Taylor was, however, a sensible woman, and vowed that worrying about it now wouldn’t do her any good. She would see how today went, and then decide what the best thing to do might be.

Outside, Lin’s heart leapt into her throat. Kevin and Izza had arrived in playground and were looking anxiously around. Looking for her, Lin realised, feeling warm inside despite herself. Then the sick feeling came back. Her friends spotted her, and ran over.

“There you are!” Kevin said, a touch crossly. “We waited for you for aaaages!”

“Sorry,” Lin said in a small voice. This wasn’t good; she wasn’t sure she wanted to have this conversation if Kevin and Izza were already cross with her. Kevin looked vaguely mollified, and began a thousand-word-a-minute monologue about all of the work he had done over the weekend for the Egypt project, which was being presented at the end of the week. Izza was looking at her strangely.

“Are you alright, Lin? You look kind of…green.” She said, sounding concerned. Lin couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Ineedtotellyousomething” she choked out. Izza blinked.

“Ok. What? Is it about why you haven’t been going to the park with us lately?” This was Kevin’s input.

“Kind of. Um. So. I kind of. Have been lying to you. A bit. Well, quite a big bit, actually.” She took a deep breath and told them. She told them about her old school, and the baby magic, and how afraid she had been. She told them about how frightened she had been that they would find out before she was ready to tell them, about how she was afraid it would happen again; she told them about Lorcan and Lysander, and how her parents mustn’t ever know she had lied, because they had raised her to always tell the truth. And most of all she told them that she was sorry, so very very sorry and she would understand if they didn’t want to be friends anymore. There was silence.

In the classroom, Mrs Taylor wished she could open then window. She watched Lin hunch into herself, looking as though she had aged about 15 years. She saw Izza and Kevin looking at her; Kevin looking very much like he wanted to hit someone and Izza looking as though she _had_ been punched. Even from this distance, the teacher could feel the tension. And then the bell went. And Kevin walked away and didn’t look back. And Lin burst into tears.

*

Izza stood frozen to the spot. She wasn’t completely sure what it was she was feeling, but she knew that there was a lot of it. She had never seen Lin cry before. She had never seen Lin as anything other than perfectly put together, except for that weird day at the start of the year when the trees went mad. She reckoned she knew what that was about, now. But it was this total breakdown that hurt her more than anything else. She wasn’t angry with Lin, not really. She had been ready to be angry, and hurt, but now that she could see how much pain her friend was in, she thought that really it was Lin who deserved an apology. She wasn’t entirely sure who from, exactly, but her general sense of fairness insisted that it was true. She didn’t really know how to do that, or how to stop her crying, so she did the only thing that she could think of, which was to sit down next to her friend, and give her a big hug. She began to be worried that the other students were looking at them funny, and that teachers were coming over to look at them and wasn’t sure what to do. Then Mrs Taylor appeared, apparently from nowhere, and said, very gently, that they should come inside now, and Lin could have some water. That just made her cry harder. Izza suddenly felt very frightened. What if Lin never stopped crying? What if she cried and cried and cried until she got all shrivelled up like a prune (Izza didn’t know what a prune was but her Mama said she turned into one when she stayed in the bath too long. When she had asked about it, Mum said it was a metaphor, whatever that was.)

“Mrs Taylor,” she began, feeling that she ought to at least try and explain, so Lin didn’t have to. Mrs Taylor smiled at her very kindly and said “I know, my lovely. I know all about it. You run along inside now.” Izza looked down at Lin, who was now sniffling and hiccupping.

“Alright. I’ll-I’ll see you later, Lin.” Lin nodded, but didn’t look at her. Feeling very much like her feet didn’t exist, Izza went inside.

Usually, after she had been crying, Lin felt much better. It was like getting rid of all the bad feelings in your tears, her dad always said. This time, though, Lin didn’t feel any better. She didn’t feel like she was going to explode, but she _did_ feel really empty, like all of her insides weren’t there anymore. Like she would shatter if someone hugged her too hard. Everything also seemed very far away. She was vaguely aware that she was being spoken to, but she couldn’t tell what they were saying. She felt like she was falling very deep inside herself, and the world didn’t matter much anymore. It half-occurred to her that this should probably worry her, but she was so tired, and it was nice and safe in here, so it didn’t.

*

Mrs Burnett was humming tunelessly to herself and making peanut butter sandwiches when the phone rang. She huffed, quickly washed her hands, and then stood in front of the machine, bracing herself. She had never quite managed to get the hang of telephones, although she had been practicing. She took a deep breath and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

She listened carefully for a moment, and went very white. She made a strange choking sound, and put a trembling hand over her mouth. She listened quietly for a few minutes, and then she thanked the person on the end of the phone and put the receiver down extremely carefully, like it might bite her. She took another deep breath, and then went out into the garden where her husband was putting down a new batch of Illuminum potion.

“David!” she called out to him, and he looked up, smiling. “David, we have to go the school. Something’s happened to Lin.”


	8. The Truth Will Set You Free (Probably) - part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin talks to her parents, and gets started on the road to recovering from all her trauma

Lin climbed, very slowly, out of herself. This was more difficult than it sounds because she had fallen a long way. She regained possession of her body just as Miss Lorenzo the headteacher was saying

“…her parents are on their way now.” Lin leapt from her chair, and cried,

“ _No!_ ” The adults turned to look at her. Under normal circumstances, this would have been really embarrassing, but it was really important that she could make Miss Lorenzo and Mrs Taylor understand. “My parents can’t come here, they can’t!” The strip lights in the ceiling fizzed and flickered threateningly. Mrs Taylor put a soothing hand on her shoulder.

“Have you heard any of what Miss Lorenzo and I have been saying, Lin?” she asked gently. Lin sank back into her seat, shaking her head. “Alright. We’ll tell you more about it when your mum and dad are here, _but,”_ she continued firmly, when Lin looked like she was going interrupt. “But. It’s very important that your mum and dad _are_ here.” Lin sniffed.

“Alright then,” she said uncertainly. The sick feeling in her tummy returned with a vengeance. She had already lost one person today, maybe two. She wasn’t sure she could stomach anyone else being angry with her.

*

It didn’t take her parents long to get there. She wondered vaguely if they had driven or apparated. Mum started fussing over her as soon as she saw her, but Dad put a hand on her shoulder and led her over to a chair.

“We need to listen to what’s happening first, love,” he said gently. Mum nodded, wringing her hands. That made Lin feel even worse. They were worried about her, and all she had done was let them down.

“Thank you for coming, Mr and Mrs Burnett,” Miss Lorenzo began. It’s a delicate matter, and we’d like to handle it as such.” Mum and Dad nodded, pale and worried. Lin looked down at her hands and tried not to listen as Miss Lorenzo and Mrs Taylor filled them in about everything that had been happening. It sounded so much worse when someone else was saying it. Tears spilled out of her eyes and she didn’t try to brush them away. The strip lights flickered some more.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mum said gently, crouching down next to her chair. Lin burst into tears. Mum pulled her gently into her arms. “It’s alright, my darling, it’s alright. Why didn’t you say something?” Lin hiccupped. T

“You were so-hic-so excited when I was coming back to school and I just didn’t want-hic-you to be disappointed in me!” Mum looked like she was going to cry too.

“My poor sweet girl,” she sighed. “Why would you think we would be disappointed in you? You didn’t have to keep it a secret from us. It’s ok if you don’t want to tell people about being a witch all at once, that’s perfectly fine!” That just made Lin cry harder. Dad hunkered down next to her.

“Listen, Muppet. Sometimes, when bad things happen to us, it makes us sad, even a long time after they’ve happened. And sometimes that makes us do things to try and protect ourselves that aren’t necessarily good things to do. And that’s alright.” After a long cuddle, Lin felt a bit better. She scrubbed a hand over her face and sat up a bit straighter. Miss Lorenzo smiled at her kindly.

“Now then, my dear, let’s have a little chat about what we’re going to do next, shall we?” Lin nodded, worried again. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might be expelled. “I think it might be best if you stayed at home for a couple of weeks. You’ve had a big shock, and I think that school might not be the best place for you to be right now.” Lin burst into tears again. Miss Lorenzo looked at her in astonishment.

“Please don’t expel me, Miss Lorenzo, please don’t! I can be good, I know I can, I’ll control it, I won’t hurt anyone, please Miss Lorenzo!!” Miss Lorenzo blinked.

“My dear girl, I’m not talking about expelling you!” she cried. Lin looked up, sniffling.

“You’re-you’re not?”

“No. I’m simply talking about having a little…holiday, from school, I suppose. And then you can come back for the last week of term, and then it will be the Christmas holidays, and you can have a good long rest. How does that sound?”

“That-that sounds ok,” she said quietly. Now that she wasn’t worried about being expelled, Lin had started to feel embarrassed. She didn’t usually cry in public!

“And how does that sound, mum and dad?” the headteacher had turned to Lin’s parents.

“I think,” Dad said slowly, “I think that would be a good idea.” Mum nodded her agreement. Miss Lorenzo beamed.

“Lovely! I can give you some contact information for some good children’s counsellors if you think that would be a good idea, too.” Mum nodded firmly.

“That would be lovely, thank you. I think that Lin needs to talk to someone who can help her sort out her feelings a bit more.” She looked meaningfully up at the still-flickering lights. Lin blushed. Mrs Taylor laughed.

“Yes! I’m not sure how many more exploding windows and swarms of bees we can manage!” Lin chuckled wetly.

“Sorry,” she said quietly. She had a thought. “Can I-can I see Izza before I go home? I don’t think Kevin wants to talk to me anymore, but I want to see Izza.” Mrs Taylor nodded.

“I’ll go and fetch her.”

Miss Lorenzo narrowed her eyes thoughtfully but didn’t say anything. She thought it would be best to keep an eye on Kevin Alpert for the time being. She wasn’t sure she liked his reaction to Lin’s ‘news’.

*

Lin and Izza’s last meeting before Lin’s ‘holiday’ was tearful, but warm. Izza tackled her in a huge hug, and promised to come and visit.

“And you can tell me all about magic, ok?” she said, taking’s Lin’s hands in hers. Lin looked at her. She didn’t look angry, or scared, just sad that Lin was going away.

“Ok,” she decided. They hugged again, and promised to stay in touch, and then Lin and her parents went home.

No one said anything. Her parents didn’t bring up why she wasn’t going to school tomorrow, or the day after that. She helped Dad finish putting down the last of the Illuminum potion in the garden. She had a nap. She played with Gilber the rat. They made, and ate, dinner together, as they usually did, and watched TV while they were doing it. It was only after the last of the plates had been washed and put away that Mum said, tentatively,

“Would you like to talk about what’s been happening at school?” Lin sat down on the sofa, carefully.

“I’m….not sure,” she admitted. “It’s….difficult.” Mum nodded.

“That’s ok, love. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Tomorrow we’ll call up and ask about some of those counsellor’s Miss Lorenzo told us about, hmm?”

“Ok, Mum,” Lin said quietly. Mum noticed. She sat down next to her daughter and took her hand.

“I know it seems scary. And I know it feels a bit like you’ve done something wrong, and that you’ve failed. But you haven’t. You’ve been so brave, my love. And seeing a counsellor is even more brave because it will help you to stop feeling so many bad feelings. They can teach you how to cope with scary things, so you don’t have to worry about your magic anymore. That sounds good, doesn’t it?” Lin nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah it does.”

Lin went to bed early that night, exhausted after a day that felt like it had lasted for years. She fell asleep so quickly that she didn’t hear the TV news report about acts of petty vandalism that had targeted the local wizarding community.


	9. My Fault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As more and more local wizards are hit by acts of petty vandalism, Lin makes a devastating discovery. Her parents promise to do better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to be sensitive about talking about acts of what essentially looks like discrimination (at the moment, although there is more to it than that) and the role of law-enforcement, given what's going on in the world at the moment. I hope that came across.

When Lin got up the following morning, she felt calmer than she had for several weeks. Still hollow inside, and with a scratchy feeling in the back of her mind that something was still not quite right, but otherwise better. She had woken up that morning thinking about Kevin. She was still unhappy about how things had turned out between them. The idea that he might hate her was indescribably painful, but she felt more resigned to it today than she had yesterday. Maybe she could talk him round once she went back to school.

Unusually, her parents were very quiet when she went down for breakfast. Actually, the fact that they were both _there_ was unusual; Mum had recently got a job at a pharmacy specialising in magical remedies for muggles, and normally left about the same time as Lin. They had their eyes glued to the TV. Lin sat down carefully at the table.

“Morning,” she said in a small voice. _Here it comes,_ she thought. _They didn’t want to get cross with me yesterday when I was sad, but they’ll be cross today._ Her mother looked up vaguely from her cup of tea and smiled wanly.

“Morning, love,” she said, voice too cheerful.

“You’re not at work?”

“No, love. No, I-um. I thought it would be best if I didn’t today.”

“Is that because we are going to talk to the counsellor today?” Lin asked. Her mother shook her head.

“Not really, love. I mean-well, sort of. The thing is some…some bad things have been happening to local wizards. Not very bad things,” she added quickly, seeing the blood drain from her daughter’s face. “You know, no one’s hurt, and most of the damage is fairly minor, but. It seems as though some local muggles are not very happy with us magical folks at the moment, for some reason. And I thought it might be a good idea not to go to work, until the Ministry and all the important people have worked out what’s going on.”

“It’s probably nothing, Muppet,” Dad said, patting Lin on the back. “Try not to worry about it. I thought we could go and visit Uncle Rolf and Auntie Luna, so they can see how you’re doing. They were worried about you yesterday.” Lin nodded, not really paying attention. She was watching the news report about the stolen wands and cauldrons and broomsticks, the owls ‘liberated’ from their cages and the cats that suddenly ran through catflaps and then refused to come out from under the bed. She was having a horrible, sneaky feeling that somehow, this was all her fault.

The visit to the Scamanders was mercifully uneventful. Auntie Luna had enveloped her in a hug that smelled of Plimpie soup and fresh paint and called her a darling creature. Gilly and Mayfly came and gave her some rather smelly kisses, and then sat next to her on the sofa so they could drool on her. Uncle Rolf took her round his workshed and showed the model train he was making Lorcan and Lysander for Christmas. It had tiny wheels that moved all by themselves and a little chimney that blew puffs of smoke. No one talked about what was happening in the news. Lin found that scarier than if everyone had been really worried. Thankfully, Uncle Rolf had cooked their lunch, so it wasn’t Plimpie soup. Lin wasn’t very hungry, but she thought it would be rude not to eat anything, so she listened to the grownups talk about Lorcan and Lysander’s first day of school, which had been eventful. Everyone had been very pleased to have wizards in the class, though. That made Lin feel silly – there really had been nothing for her to worry about. She put her knife and fork down and looked at the floor while the grown-ups finished their meal.

Once they got home, Lin was feeling tired again, so she went to bed. She could hear the TV through her bedroom floor, though, talking about how important it was for people to stay alert for more vandalism over the next few hours. Hermione Granger and the muggle Prime Minister made a joint statement about the importance of maintaining friendly wizard-muggle relations. Outside, the wind started to pick up. Mr and Mrs Burnett looked at each other, and worried. 

*

The following day was not much better. The TV was on again when Lin went downstairs, with more news about stolen wands, stolen potion ingredients and broken windows. Lin was getting really worried now, and the weather matched her mood. The TV was flickering ominously, and all down the street, lights were suddenly coming on when no one had flipped the switches. The wizarding community was becoming paranoid, and the Ministry of Magic was having a really hard time keeping people calm.

That afternoon, Lin’s mood got even worse. There was a news report about a local apothecary that supplied the whole town with ingredients for household potions, which had been ransacked and left a note saying

> ‘Sory about the mess, I have left some mony for the things I took. Pleas don’t send dementors after me’

When Lin saw the note, which had made headlines across the country, she shrieked and ran upstairs. Her parents looked at each other again, concerned. She’d been doing so much better, and now it seemed that the world was conspiring to make her never want to the leave the house again!

Upstairs, Lin was hiding under her duvet, quivering. The mirror on her bedroom wall had shattered, and shards of razor-sharp glass were floating aimlessly around the room. Lin put her hands over her ears and whimpered.

She had known he was angry. She had suspected that he would be very angry. But this angry? Surely not? Had her lies put people in this much danger? Had she ruined wizard-muggle relations forever? The idea was intolerable. The great pit of despair that had been beginning to close over inside her yawned open again, and the ground began to shake as pipes all over town started to break apart. Her parents flew up the stairs and threw open the bedroom door.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mum said gently, coming and sitting beside the quivering lump in the duvet. “It’s alright, darling, Mummy’s here. No one is going to hurt you, I promise. It’s all going to be ok.” The bed trembled and lifted a few inches off the ground.

“Lin, _please,_ ” her father pleaded. “Try to take some deep breaths. It’s ok. Whoever’s doing all the stealing hasn’t hurt anyone. You’re going to be fine.”

“It’s not fine!” Lin shrieked from beneath the bedclothes. The windows started to rattle. “It’s not fine, it’s all. My. FAULT!” Her parents looked at each other, concerned. They had had a conversation the previous evening about what they had done wrong, and how many things they had let go because of how desperately they had wanted their daughter to get better. They had promised that they wouldn’t be letting things go anymore.

“What do you mean, Muppet?” Dad asked, sitting on the other side of the bed. “I don’t think this is your fault, my love.”

“It is it is!” Lin sobbed, still not removing the duvet from over her head. “I lied to him and now he’s angry and he’s-hic-hurting-hic-people!” Her parents looked at each other.

“Who is angry, darling?” Mum asked, bewildered. Had she been so unobservant that her daughter had befriended some delinquent anti-wizard and she hadn’t noticed?

“ _Kevin!”_

The window shattered. The bulbs in the streetlights shattered. The shards of glass Lin’s parents had had to duck to avoid fell to the ground, sharp-edge down. Mrs Burnett took a deep breath.

“Why-why do you think Kevin has anything to do with this, Linnea?” she asked gently. Well, she hoped it was gently. She needed to tread carefully.

“The note,” the little girl sobbed. “It’s-hic-it’s his handwriting. And he _always_ forgets to put the other ‘e’ in please.” Mrs Burnett looked at her husband. Mr Burnett looked at his wife.

“Sit up for me please, Lin,” her mother said, lifting the duvet off her daughter’s head. Lin sat up in a puddle of blankets. “Ok. First of all, it’s ok that you lied. It is,” she added firmly, when it looked like Lin was going to protest. “You were feeling very frightened, and although it’s not good to lie, you wanted to help yourself feel safe. And Kevin knows that. And if he is your friend, he ought to be able to understand that you needed to feel safe. And secondly, Kevin’s behaviour is not your responsibility. However sad Kevin is about what happened, how he responds to that is _not your fault._ Ok?”

“Ok,” Lin sniffled. The ominous rumbling in the background died away. Mrs Burnett smiled.

“Good girl. Now, you go with Dad and get a snack – if you look carefully there might be some chocolate biscuits in the kitchen. And then we’re going to call the counsellor that Miss Lorenzo told us about. And _then,_ I think we will go and talk to the Ministry community officers, and have a chat with them. How does that sound?” Lin sniffed again.

“Ok, Mum.” Mr Burnett picked up his daughter and carried her downstairs to look for snacks. Mrs Burnett remained seated on her daughter’s bed, looking at the jagged scars in the wall from the last time Lin had shattered her mirror. She had always prided herself on being a good mother, and it wasn’t easy to discover that she had got a lot of things wrong. She sighed, and started straightening out the bedclothes. _Well,_ she thought, _no time like the present for starting something new._ She promised herself that from then on, she would do better. Or, at the very least, she would try.


End file.
